Strongest DnD villain Earth can beat

[masamune1]

Earth runs a gauntlet of DnD bad guys.

What is the highest caliber of villain we could deal with before we start getting stomped?

Looking for named villains ideally but could accept monster types etc

Just curious, not serious.

EDIT: Also open to the monsters or villains using sneakier tactics than just rampaging like a monster.

[Scots Dragon]

It'd get to deities or borderline before the Earth really has much of a problem.

Even the biggest, baddest dragons in the monster manual can't do much against ballistic missiles.

[AvatarVecna]

It's honestly gonna be a mix. D&D monsters are CR X at least partially because it's assumed parties of ECL X will have the tools necessary to deal with them. We can look at how IRL weapons would translate into D&D mechanics, and see how they stack up

A Great Wyrm Gold Dragon has DR 20/magic, immunity to fire damage, AC 42, and 717 HP. It's pretty impressive. A platoon of experienced soldiers (Fighter 6?) with automatic rifles will still only hit on a 20, and even a crit will have a 7/10 chance of dealing no damage unless modern rifle tech is cool enough to count as "magic". Frag grenades deal slashing damage instead of fire, but they're not magic so they still have to square with the DR. And there's a DC 15 save for half. Dragons became more or less grenade-proof as soon as they hit adult: you've got a 5% chance of them taking 4d6-20 instead of 2d6-20, and the 4d6 only has a ~3% chance of dealing damage at all.

...but that's if the dragon is engaging ground forces alone. Get some miniguns involved, some modern siege weapons and artillery, or even a modicum of air support, and it becomes a whole different story: dragons fly fast for D&D, but 250 ft fly speed...well, 1000 ft/round is ~113 mph. They're getting outflown by helicopters with turrets, big machine guns, and missile launchers. We haven't even touched on jets: Mach 0.5 is a very efficient speed for jets to move at, and that's still ~383 mph, or more than 3 times as fast as a dragon flying all out. And they've got much bigger booms. Once aircraft like this gets involved, the dragon being a dragon matters far less than the dragon having sorcerer casting: the dragon either has the magic chops to make combat irrelevant, or they don't and all that AC/HP/DR doesn't matter because they're fighting an enemy that makes their wings and their breath weapon look like bad jokes.

This is the case for basically any beatstick enemy in the game. Even the hecatoncheires can be nuked - it'll take an awful long time to regenerate from that. But there's enemies in D&D that modern militaries just don't have the ability to deal with. Enemies where it's less a question of big numbers, and more a question of tactics. What, exactly, is a modern military going to do against a shadow (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/shadow.htm)?

Sure, it's got crap AC and HP compared to the dragon, but who cares? Without magic, there's literally nothing we can do to them. Even if IRL holy water counts as D&D holy water, that's not exactly gonna be available to the front lines in massive quantities. And until it's available, the military is going to have to deal with an enemy that can't be touched, doesn't sleep, flies faster than you run, can walk through walls, kills with a touch, and turns murdered soldiers into more of its own kind. If we released a single shadow into a populated city, and we assume it takes a shadow a whole 3 minutes to chase down and convert somebody into another shadow...you could walk away for an hour, and come back to 1 million shadows. That's the kind of time frame you have to get massive amounts of holy water within...and that's assuming it even works! D&D gets away with it because every small middle-of-nowhere thorp has a decent chance for one or two priests on hand, but IRL we'd just be screwed.

[ngilop]

Is earth coming to D&D land..


OR


Is D&D coming to earth?



That is a very important detail one needs to know before answering.

[ben-zayb]

As long as beat doesn't necessarily require killing the monster, Earth can beat the Tarraque and keep it unconscious. Then, Earth can systematically harvest its parts for renewable resources.

Many epic monsters are functionally "tank and spank" creatures and will be beaten with enough pure firepower.

[masamune1]

Is earth coming to D&D land..


OR


Is D&D coming to earth?



That is a very important detail one needs to know before answering.

DnD coming to Earth.

Also open to the monsters or villains using sneakier tactics than just rampaging like a monster.

[ngilop]

If D&D is coming to earth, then I doubt there is anything that cannot be defeated by earth.

[Doctor Despair]

The Shadowpocalypse will absolutely happen unless there's some sort of cheese that causes them to die out immediately. Was there a prophet or saint of some sort that blessed the ocean at some point? If the entire quantity of water in the ocean became holy water, then pretty much all the water in the ecosystem is holy water at this point, so maybe all shadows would die the first time it rains. They're probably not smart enough to avoid this with 6 int.

[masamune1]

If D&D is coming to earth, then I doubt there is anything that cannot be defeated by earth.

Not the entirety of DnD; just a random DnD monster or villain.

There are obviously things like gods that Earth would be unable to beat, but what if a lich or a vampire, or a cleric of some evil god, or some other evil doer appears?

Not just that they go on a rampage either; they might operate from the shadows, or start a cult or run for office etc

[AvatarVecna]

The Shadowpocalypse will absolutely happen unless there's some sort of cheese that causes them to die out immediately. Was there a prophet or saint of some sort that blessed the ocean at some point? If the entire quantity of water in the ocean became holy water, then pretty much all the water in the ecosystem is holy water at this point, so maybe all shadows would die the first time it rains. They're probably not smart enough to avoid this with 6 int.

If it's raining holy water, they've got some time to panic and maybe pick one direction to run in. If they get in a building, or heck if they just fly underground, they'll survive. I doubt every single one of them will pick "down" as their direction to fly (and heck, I doubt all of them are close enough to shelter to avoid dying to rain), but as long as one survives, it can restart the apocalypse later.

Also, 6 Int isn't that dumb. It's bottom 10%. It's about as dumb as Int 14 is smart. We're talking "slow children" mentality, not "bug that can't figure out why it can't phase through a closed glass window". "Water hurt find shelter" is not some high-faluting concept exclusive to people lacking an Int penalty.

[AvatarVecna]

Not the entirety of DnD; just a random DnD monster or villain.

There are obviously things like gods that Earth would be unable to beat, but what if a lichl or a vampire, or a cleric of some evil god, or some other evil doer appears?

Not just that they go on a rampage either; they might operate from the shadows, or start a cult or run for office etc

Lich is gonna be tricky because their phylactery is probably somewhere besides Earth. Even if it's here, we don't really have any reason to expect we're dealing with a horror, and even if we did, we don't really have the tech for tracking such things.

Vampire we might have a chance against even if it goes really sneaky. Vampire is a self-propagating undead the way shadows are, but vampires are much slower. Additionally, D&D vampires have basically all the classic Vampire weaknesses, and modern pop culture will have most people knowing at least a couple of those. The Vampire will probably get a sizeable blood cult going, and then people will become aware there's a Vampire menace and will start taking precautions.

[masamune1]

Lich is gonna be tricky because their phylactery is probably somewhere besides Earth. Even if it's here, we don't really have any reason to expect we're dealing with a horror, and even if we did, we don't really have the tech for tracking such things.

Vampire we might have a chance against even if it goes really sneaky. Vampire is a self-propagating undead the way shadows are, but vampires are much slower. Additionally, D&D vampires have basically all the classic Vampire weaknesses, and modern pop culture will have most people knowing at least a couple of those. The Vampire will probably get a sizeable blood cult going, and then people will become aware there's a Vampire menace and will start taking precautions.

What if, say, some cleric of Bane finds a portal to Earth and starts a new Church to him, and quickly amasses followers since he (and the most faithful of his new flock) actually have divine magical powers?

How long until the public at large see them as a problem and what are the odds of them taking over the planet?

[Doctor Despair]

If it's raining holy water, they've got some time to panic and maybe pick one direction to run in. If they get in a building, or heck if they just fly underground, they'll survive. I doubt every single one of them will pick "down" as their direction to fly (and heck, I doubt all of them are close enough to shelter to avoid dying to rain), but as long as one survives, it can restart the apocalypse later.

Also, 6 Int isn't that dumb. It's bottom 10%. It's about as dumb as Int 14 is smart. We're talking "slow children" mentality, not "bug that can't figure out why it can't phase through a closed glass window". "Water hurt find shelter" is not some high-faluting concept exclusive to people lacking an Int penalty.

Remember, incorporeals have to remain adjacent to the surface, so the water filtering down into ground water could still possibly get at them.

Additionally, it would probably stop shadows from crossing oceans and seas (as ocean storms would strike, leaving them with nowhere to hide).

[Mnemius]

The Shadowpocalypse will absolutely happen unless there's some sort of cheese that causes them to die out immediately. Was there a prophet or saint of some sort that blessed the ocean at some point? If the entire quantity of water in the ocean became holy water, then pretty much all the water in the ecosystem is holy water at this point, so maybe all shadows would die the first time it rains. They're probably not smart enough to avoid this with 6 int.

Oceans... no. The rains over an entire continent, those have been blessed repeatedly, it's even a song. So, yes, copious holy water in the earth ecosystem.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Holy water is made by the bless water spell. I doubt anyone here on completely nonmagical Earth can cast it, give it's, y'know, magic.

Then again, if Earth is in a dead magic plane, we wouldn't have to worry about incorporeals either way.

[Kurald Galain]

The Shadowpocalypse will absolutely happen unless there's some sort of cheese that causes them to die out immediately.
To be fair, by those same assumptions, the Shadowpocalypse will also happen in pretty much every D&D campaign world.


The rains over an entire continent, those have been blessed repeatedly, it's even a song.
Toto's a bard, not a cleric :smallbiggrin:

[Mechalich]

In addition to the incorporeality bugaboo, there's also the problem of creatures that can transform into human form and then launch indirect attacks that cause humans to destroy themselves. Change Shape + Mind Control basically, with all sorts of viable ways to do that. A Succubus, at CR 7, is a relatively low-powered option that can absolutely do this.

[PraxisVetli]

Was there a prophet or saint of some sort that blessed the ocean at some point? If the entire quantity of water in the ocean became holy water, then pretty much all the water in the ecosystem is holy water at this point, so maybe all shadows would die the first time it rains. They're probably not smart enough to avoid this with 6 int.
Only the rain in Africa is blessed.

Edit-Just noticed someone beat me to the joke

[Kesnit]

Holy water is made by the bless water spell. I doubt anyone here on completely nonmagical Earth can cast it, give it's, y'know, magic.

Is it magic or does everyone think it is magic because there are words and motions?

In 40K, the Mechanicus believes certain incenses, oils, and rituals are required to keep the machines running. Reading between the lines, it's more like "grease the gears and push the power button" - completely non-magical and doable by anyone who knows where the oil and power button are.

Same idea with bless water. Does it actually take magical power (complete with the required V, S, and M), or is it done by a person with sufficient faith in their personal deity who just believes the water is now holy? (Which is technically magic, but actually feasible in the real world).

Which leads to another question... If D&D monsters are coming to this world, what is to stop D&D magic from coming as well? Bless Water is a 1st level spell. I find it hard to believe that if D&D magic comes, there aren't people somewhere on Earth with sufficient faith and life experience to be at least Cleric 1.

[Biggus]

Holy water is made by the bless water spell. I doubt anyone here on completely nonmagical Earth can cast it, give it's, y'know, magic.

Then again, if Earth is in a dead magic plane, we wouldn't have to worry about incorporeals either way.

I'd be interested to see your evidence that Earth is completely nonmagical. As far as I can see, all you can really conclude is "I haven't seen any".

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I'd be interested to see your evidence that Earth is completely nonmagical. As far as I can see, all you can really conclude is "I haven't seen any".Logical fallacy. You can't prove the non-existence of that for which no evidence of any kind exists.

[Kurald Galain]

I find it hard to believe that if D&D magic comes, there aren't people somewhere on Earth with sufficient faith and life experience to be at least Cleric 1.
That's a fair point, and it's plausible that what is called "holy water" IRL also counts as "holy water" for the purpose of hurting D&D vampires and other undead.

It's also quite plausible that, say, laser weapons can hurt incorporeal creatures, and that this isn't mentioned in the D&D rulebooks because D&D doesn't have laser weapons. In other words, just because D&D rules don't describe every kind of 21st-century technology doesn't mean that any and all 21st-century tech is utterly useless against D&D creatures.

[Soranar]

If we were to analyze real weapons for DnD purposes.

Guns are touch attacks for sure

with a wounding (CON damage) and bleeding (hp damage per round until healed) effect

The shortest effective range of a rifle is like 500 meters so that'd around 1600 ft range. Honestly the real limit is the shooter so let's just say a 250ft range increment with 1500 maximum range.

According to DnD an elephant has 104 hitpoints on average and someone hunting one is expected to kill it in 3 shots or less and it's reasonable to do so in 1 if you know what you're doing so the damage of an elephant gun would have to be

8d6 with a 17-20 threat range and a x4 crit multiplier

So 2 humans with elephant guns could easily kill a 12 headed hydra in 1 round from 250 ft away assuming they shoot once per round. That's CR 11.

Anything that's corporeal, not invisible, not immune to crits, with terrible touch AC shouldn't be much of a problem. Even with DR and fast healing, eventually the human weapon should deal enough damage to get through anyway.

As for tricks

Invisibility is supposed to hide you from normal eyesight and infrared so that would be an issue for sure. Anything incorporeal like a shadow, ghosts and the like, would be an issue.

But now think what kind of damage 1 necromancer armed with an undead army wielding guns could do and yeah... I don't give earth a big chance. Spells would wreck us : etherealness, invisibility, charm person, dominate person, mind switch, magic jar.

All it would take is 1 determined spellcaster and he could have us nuke ourselves fairly quickly.

[Kurald Galain]

I am reminded of that episode of Buffy where an ancient vampire is prophesied to be immune to any man-made weapon... so she takes it out with a rocket launcher. Because that prophesy was centuries old and rocket launchers were invented later.

I'm sure our scientists can whip up something that detects invisible creatures, or possibly covers them in some kind of sparkly dirt.

[AvatarVecna]

If we were to analyze real weapons for DnD purposes.

Guns are touch attacks for sure

with a wounding (CON damage) and bleeding (hp damage per round until healed) effect

The shortest effective range of a rifle is like 500 meters so that'd around 1600 ft range. Honestly the real limit is the shooter so let's just say a 250ft range increment with 1500 maximum range.

According to DnD an elephant has 104 hitpoints on average and someone hunting one is expected to kill it in 3 shots or less and it's reasonable to do so in 1 if you know what you're doing so the damage of an elephant gun would have to be

8d6 with a 17-20 threat range and a x4 crit multiplier

So 2 humans with elephant guns could easily kill a 12 headed hydra in 1 round from 250 ft away assuming they shoot once per round. That's CR 11.

Anything that's corporeal, not invisible, not immune to crits, with terrible touch AC shouldn't be much of a problem. Even with DR and fast healing, eventually the human weapon should deal enough damage to get through anyway.

As for tricks

Invisibility is supposed to hide you from normal eyesight and infrared so that would be an issue for sure. Anything incorporeal like a shadow, ghosts and the like, would be an issue.

But now think what kind of damage 1 necromancer armed with an undead army wielding guns could do and yeah... I don't give earth a big chance. Spells would wreck us : etherealness, invisibility, charm person, dominate person, mind switch, magic jar.

All it would take is 1 determined spellcaster and he could have us nuke ourselves fairly quickly.

I'm not saying your analysis is incorrect (we could argue all day about what rules are appropriate for firearms), but both 3.5 and PF have rules for firearms, and they don't work this way. 3.5 attacks AC, deals big base damage, but has small crits (20/x2). No con damage, no bleed. PF attacks touch AC out to a certain range, deals normal base damage, but has big crits (20/x4, for the most part). No con damage, no bleed.

You might think that's not how guns should work in D&D. But that's how guns do work in D&D.

[loky1109]

If we were to analyze real weapons for DnD purposes.

Guns are touch attacks for sure

with a wounding (CON damage) and bleeding (hp damage per round until healed) effect

As like as swords and crossbows. For sure.


8d6 with a 17-20 threat range and a x4 crit multiplier.

You again talk about swords and crossbows, yes?

I should point out for you. HP isn't literal durability. If commoner-1 trying to strike fighter-20 (who doesn't strike back, I mean) with the sword it doesn't mean that he should literally strike him about half hundred times. I don't think so. Hit Points isn't "meat points". Hit that decreases amount of hp can be miss "in game". Commoner missed once, twice, twenty times more and when fighter's hp are over, he finally hit. Or even miss, but fighter stumbles and falls head on the rock. It still RAW legitim.

_____________________
You can try to calculate energy of fireball. 20 ft radius, melts gold. Well, one fireball can melt 120 000 tons of gold... Firstly hots for 1064,18 °C (1947,52 °F) - ~15 000 000 000 kJ, next melt - ~30 000 000 kJ more. Sum about three TNT kilotons.

I just did the same that did you. Forgot that game's rules isn't physical laws.

[liquidformat]

If we were to analyze real weapons for DnD purposes.

Guns are touch attacks for sure

with a wounding (CON damage) and bleeding (hp damage per round until healed) effect

Sure some high powered guns would be reasonable classified as touch weapons but I don't think all guns should automatically be touch weapons. I also think we would have to toss in Called Shot rules or something similar when dealing with converting guns into d&d weapons, since where you are aiming and how well you can aim is often as important if not more than the weapon itself.

Taking the elephant example for a moment. An untrained shooter with an elephant gun/high powered sniper rifle could probably shoot the same elephant 20+ before they kill it.


Invisibility is supposed to hide you from normal eyesight and infrared so that would be an issue for sure. Anything incorporeal like a shadow, ghosts and the like, would be an issue.

Where in D&D does it say invisibility can overcome infrared vision? I think it is perfectly reasonable that infrared vision could detect most creatures with invisibility.

In general I believe as has been said the beatstick monsters wouldn't be very difficult at all and even a lot of the epic beatsticks wouldn't be much of a threat. However, I think even something like an optimized first level changeling Rogue could be incredibly challenging and could 'beat earth' pretty quickly through subterfuge. Mystic from X-men is a great example of just how powerful even a low level changeling could be. Similarly, things like Aranea or even an imp could be quite powerful as long as they use stealth and subterfuge. Heck an imp that could turn into a raven and just fly around a united nations summit casting suggestion could pretty quickly lead to WWIII.

I Think something like say wererat or werewolf that wasn't just crazy stupid could pretty quickly turn the world on its head. Similarly, if you throw a Ghoul into say LA and let it loose on the homeless population by the time anyone notices what is going on we would probably have a a ghoul pandemic on our hands, especially if you had some smarter ghouls specifically looking to cause trouble.

[Scots Dragon]

As a fun fact, it's actually canonical in various Wizards of the Coast d20 materials that the Earth already is magical, and has to deal with incursions from the magical worlds. It's the whole basis of campaign settings like Shadow Chasers, Urban Arcana, and the 19th-century set Masque of the Red Death.


Shadow Chasers is the most appropriate of them. The basic idea is pretty much a mix of Dungeons & Dragons and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with a secret society stopping various monsters from causing trouble.

[Soranar]

Where in D&D does it say invisibility can overcome infrared vision? I think it is perfectly reasonable that infrared vision could detect most creatures with invisibility.
.

Maybe it was old dnd (2nd edition) but certain creatures , notably elves, saw in infrared and did not see invisible creatures

[Tzardok]

Yup. 2e had infravision instead of darkvision. Invisibility still worked.

[liquidformat]

Maybe it was old dnd (2nd edition) but certain creatures , notably elves, saw in infrared and did not see invisible creatures

hum must be an earlier version or someone's very bad interpretation of what darkvision is. Either way that would effectively turn darkvision into blindsight which would be very ridiculous.

[Eldan]

It'd get to deities or borderline before the Earth really has much of a problem.

Even the biggest, baddest dragons in the monster manual can't do much against ballistic missiles.

I mean, they are spellcasters. They can, for example, turn ethereal.

[Pezzo]

DnD coming to Earth.

Also open to the monsters or villains using sneakier tactics than just rampaging like a monster.

If dnds laws of physics follow the villain to earth and everybody on the planet is affected, we'd find out very soon and hit epic levels in a few hours, NPCs don't know how to level up, so they don't stand a chance. But we will have lots of new native epic villains everywhere.

[liquidformat]

I mean, they are spellcasters. They can, for example, turn ethereal.

Maybe, Etherealness is a level 7 spell so you need to be a level 14th sorcerer, that happens somewhere between Very Old and Great Wyrm for most dragons, while the white dragon doesn't even hit CL 14 at Great Wyrm. Also what the dragon has at their disposal is very dependent on their choices for spells known. A lot of how hard a dragon would be to deal with comes down to how well it chose its spells and what type of tactics it takes.

A dragon that goes full dumb beatstick is probably going to loose whereas like most others monsters/villains that would do well, if they go more subterfuge they could probably be incredibly effective.

In general the metallic dragons would actually have a slightly easier time since most of them have alternate form. But a great strategy for a dragon would be to pretend to be a god and grow a cult/religion, and they have the magic to create 'miracles'. As long as they aren't preaching war and overthrowing the world a dragon or caster could very quickly create a massive following.

A divine caster with low level spells like purify food and water would be world changing in a lot of areas on earth, and an arcane caster has classics like using Prestidigitation to turn water into wine. A charismatic caster with pretty low level spells has enough oomph to really flip the world on its head without ever going into combat. After growing a massive following they could style themselves as a peacemaker much like other prominent religious figures and use proximity to dominate heads of state or just use something like suggestion to just nudge people in whatever direction they want. The truly smart and powerful monsters/villains wouldn't even need to make themselves known for what they truly are and could become something like a 'god king'. Heck at some point showing themselves as a dragon might actually make more people believe.

[Telonius]

I think there's going to be a very different answer to the OP's question, depending on how sneaky the enemy is going to be, and whether or not we know that spellcasting exists. Let's say you had an optimized diplomancer, or a Doppelganger, and we didn't know that those sorts of things exist. They could conceivably carry out their entire plan while only extremely rarely putting themselves in any kind of direct danger. Give them access to Glibness, Telepathy, Suggestion, and Modify Memory, and we'd lose before we even knew we were fighting.

[OracleofWuffing]

As long as beat doesn't necessarily require killing the monster, Earth can beat the Tarraque and keep it unconscious.
I'm reminded, ages ago, about a concept once floated around that someone would name their character "Miracle" to nonmagically kill the Tarrasque.

(Yes, strict raw, it wouldn't work, but strict raw, anyone that brings a ladder could wreck Earth's global economy.)

[Scots Dragon]

I'm reminded, ages ago, about a concept once floated around that someone would name their character "Miracle" to nonmagically kill the Tarrasque.

(Yes, strict raw, it wouldn't work, but strict raw, anyone that brings a ladder could wreck Earth's global economy.)

You know, that's the kinda weird loophole that actually might work under the rules of certain magic systems. But it can't have been planned.

[Liquor Box]

Is earth coming to D&D land..

OR

Is D&D coming to earth?

That is a very important detail one needs to know before answering.

This is the answer.

DnD works on a certain set of rules, the real world works on a different set of rules. Do we try to shoehorn the real world into DnD rules, or DnD into the way the real world works.


Sure, it's got crap AC and HP compared to the dragon, but who cares? Without magic, there's literally nothing we can do to them. Even if IRL holy water counts as D&D holy water, that's not exactly gonna be available to the front lines in massive quantities. And until it's available, the military is going to have to deal with an enemy that can't be touched, doesn't sleep, flies faster than you run, can walk through walls, kills with a touch, and turns murdered soldiers into more of its own kind. If we released a single shadow into a populated city, and we assume it takes a shadow a whole 3 minutes to chase down and convert somebody into another shadow...you could walk away for an hour, and come back to 1 million shadows. That's the kind of time frame you have to get massive amounts of holy water within...and that's assuming it even works! D&D gets away with it because every small middle-of-nowhere thorp has a decent chance for one or two priests on hand, but IRL we'd just be screwed.

I completely agree with you about the dragon. Even a few men automatic weapons who only hits 5% of the time and causes low damage per hit, will still get through those hit points when you realise they can empty a full clip (usually 30 bullets) every round.

But I disagree about the Shadow. It depends on how the rules apply - you ask in your own post whether guns count as magic. If not, nuclear weapons would seem to - and one Nuke could wipe out those entire million shadows.

But beyond that, I don't think Shadows behave the way you describe, relentlessly running down a human after another. The rules say "Shadows lurk in dark places, waiting for living prey to happen by."


In addition to the incorporeality bugaboo, there's also the problem of creatures that can transform into human form and then launch indirect attacks that cause humans to destroy themselves. Change Shape + Mind Control basically, with all sorts of viable ways to do that. A Succubus, at CR 7, is a relatively low-powered option that can absolutely do this.

Those sorts of powers, if they worked on earth, would be useful. It would possibly make it the most successful serial killer in history. But I don't think it would be able to destroy or take over the world.


I'm sure our scientists can whip up something that detects invisible creatures, or possibly covers them in some kind of sparkly dirt.
Agree with this. If we change the rules of the real world so invisibility or incorporeality or whatever exists, then it seems very likely that we'd quickly find a way to counteract it. Like Ghostbusters, something strange appears in our neighbourhood, and a few weeks later people have invented ray guns that shoot ghosts.


3.5 attacks AC, deals big base damage, but has small crits (20/x2).

Modern firearms, or something equivalent to the firearms of the 1400s?


I think there's going to be a very different answer to the OP's question, depending on how sneaky the enemy is going to be, and whether or not we know that spellcasting exists. Let's say you had an optimized diplomancer, or a Doppelganger, and we didn't know that those sorts of things exist. They could conceivably carry out their entire plan while only extremely rarely putting themselves in any kind of direct danger. Give them access to Glibness, Telepathy, Suggestion, and Modify Memory, and we'd lose before we even knew we were fighting.
I struggle with the idea that sneakiness is going to somehow put the earth at great danger. It's not like sneakiness doesn't exist here.

Sure, DnD creatures will have spells and abilities that give them useful abilities in that regard. But the tradeoff, is that we have a whole lot of technological aids that the DnD invader will not.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Lasers, electrical arcs, flamethrowers and obviously nuclear radiation would deal damage to incorporeal creatures. Starfinder clarifies that any attack constituted entirely of energy (such as a laser weapon) does 50% damage to an incorporeal creature.

Still, that probably wouldn't be enough to prevent a Shadowcalypse, as equipping armies worldwide with flamethrowers would take way too much time, and the only real way of dealing with it that would be readily available is to nuke the first "infected" city, with the risk of worldwide increased radiations and nuclear winter. With the sluggishness of governmental decision-making, I don't expect the shadows to be confined to a single city, or even a single country. There would have to be priests posted around every city brandishing holy symbols to ward off shadows. Even if they're considered level one, they should be able to hold indefinitely, and we'd eventually beat the shadows with flamethrowers or real-life Archimedes' Mirror and reconquer progressively the world, but that would be a really bad century for the economy.

Also, it's a bit daunting to think that we live in a world where nuclear weaponry is more quickly available than flamethrowers. Probably a good thing, since that means we're progressively moving from oil to atom power, but still...

[Liquor Box]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Lasers, electrical arcs, flamethrowers and obviously nuclear radiation would deal damage to incorporeal creatures. Starfinder clarifies that any attack constituted entirely of energy (such as a laser weapon) does 50% damage to an incorporeal creature.

Still, that probably wouldn't be enough to prevent a Shadowcalypse, as equipping armies worldwide with flamethrowers would take way too much time, and the only real way of dealing with it that would be readily available is to nuke the first "infected" city, with the risk of worldwide increased radiations and nuclear winter. With the sluggishness of governmental decision-making, I don't expect the shadows to be confined to a single city, or even a single country. There would have to be priests posted around every city brandishing holy symbols to ward off shadows. Even if they're considered level one, they should be able to hold indefinitely, and we'd eventually beat the shadows with flamethrowers or real-life Archimedes' Mirror and reconquer progressively the world, but that would be a really bad century for the economy.

Also, it's a bit daunting to think that we live in a world where nuclear weaponry is more quickly available than flamethrowers. Probably a good thing, since that means we're progressively moving from oil to atom power, but still...

If Shadows were some how driven to move at their movement speed toward the next city, rather than lurking and waiting like their description, how long do you think it would take? I haven't worked it out, but I'm expecting days to move between relatively nearby cities.

Government's can make the decision to launch nukes pretty quickly, because they have to be able to launch before the enemy nukes arrive. Nuclear winter won't be a problem unless the shadows are already widespread.

[liquidformat]

I struggle with the idea that sneakiness is going to somehow put the earth at great danger. It's not like sneakiness doesn't exist here.

Sure, DnD creatures will have spells and abilities that give them useful abilities in that regard. But the tradeoff, is that we have a whole lot of technological aids that the DnD invader will not.

The real issue is sneakiness plus abilities we aren't aware of much less have technology in place to deal with. For example let's look at a changeling enchanter; they can change their appearance on the fly looking like a whole different person in seconds; have magical abilities that can make people change their decision or just dominate them. It wouldn't as I said before be hard for such a monster/villain to infiltrate a UN meeting where all the heads of state of the world are present and influence/dominate people as they please. That is the real danger of sneakiness.

Also like I pointed out it doesn't take that much magic for someone to convince the religious world that they are the second coming of real world religious figures and an industrious caster could do so in relatively short order.

While I agree once the world is exposed to magic and magical things it wouldn't take that long to start utilizing magic and come up with ways to counter everything. However, it is a question of time, if the world was hit with magic but the invaders were stealthy about their innovation we might not even notice the existence of magic in the world until its too late.


If Shadows were some how driven to move at their movement speed toward the next city, rather than lurking and waiting like their description, how long do you think it would take? I haven't worked it out, but I'm expecting days to move between relatively nearby cities.

Government's can make the decision to launch nukes pretty quickly, because they have to be able to launch before the enemy nukes arrive. Nuclear winter won't be a problem unless the shadows are already widespread.

The size of the nukes would be important too, we have the capability of deploying nukes that aren't powerful enough to cause nuclear winter. Also we have other types of bombs that would probably work on shadows too; nukes aren't the only choice here.

Talking about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic I think there is pretty good support that weaponized laser gun would have similar if not the same effect as a searing light spell. Also we should be clear, that we already do have the capability to make weaponized laser weapons and some have already been made its just because of certain treats we don't make or use them as they have been classified similar to chemical weapons.

[Beni-Kujaku]

If Shadows were some how driven to move at their movement speed toward the next city, rather than lurking and waiting like their description, how long do you think it would take? I haven't worked it out, but I'm expecting days to move between relatively nearby cities.

If there are enough shadows and they are considered to go in a straight line except when feeding, you can approximate the infection to a circle growing at a constant 40ft/6s, or 7.2km/h (around 5mph) speed. The world has a half-circumference of 20 000km, which means the shadows will cover the entire earth from one city in 2800 hours, or 4 months. To go from a big city to the next (let's say 100km apart), they would take around 14 hours.

If, on the other hand, they don't know where they're going and moving randomly, then the distance from their starting point evolves as the square root of the time since they started. So, after a day (or 14 400 rounds), they would have, in average travelled sqrt(14400)*40=4800 ft, or 1.44 kilometers from the initial city. The bulk of the shadow horde would only reach a 100km-away city in years.

Obviously the average is not representative, and from millions of shadows, there may be a good chance one reaches a nearby city. The chance for a shadow to be at least 100km (8333*40ft) away from the starting point after a week (~100 000 rounds) is :

P=Int(8333<r<+inf) dr r/1e5 exp(-r²/1e5)
P=Int(7e7<r²<+inf) d(r²) 1/(2e5) exp(-r²/1e5)
P=Int(7e2<K<inf) d(K=r²/1e5) exp(-K)/2
P=exp(-7e2)/2~10^(-300)

It would take 700 weeks (10 years give or take) for an army of shadows to have a chance, by flying randomly, to get anyway except in the general vicinity of their creation and be of any danger (yay, another global warming analogy). If you act in a month, a Tsar Bomba should wipe out all but very few shadows, then you can send soldiers to take care of the rest "by hand". With a randomly marching army of shadows, there is absolutely no chance that they could reach a city in any meaningful amount of time, and that's not even factoring the fact that they could also go up and get lost in space. Then again, if someone guided or baited a shadow from a city to another, that may be much faster and the world could be destroyed in a matter of months.

[Telonius]

I struggle with the idea that sneakiness is going to somehow put the earth at great danger. It's not like sneakiness doesn't exist here.

Sure, DnD creatures will have spells and abilities that give them useful abilities in that regard. But the tradeoff, is that we have a whole lot of technological aids that the DnD invader will not.


We have sneakiness and propaganda. We don't have outright mind control. "Hey General, I am totally your President and absolutely not an impostor. I suggest that you order the tanks to roll before your rival can do the same. Also, you've told me before that you think this is an excellent idea. But this is a secret mission that I can't acknowledge openly. In fact I'll have to publicly denounce you after it happens, but don't worry, that's all part of the plan. Stick to it no matter what, you'll be hailed as a hero when it's over."

Super-simplified, but you get the idea. "General, mad with power, goes rogue" is not a headline that we'd question all that much. Repeat that a few times, gradually escalating the seriousness of the attacks, and we'll blast ourselves back into the middle ages. Except for that one country, that still has modern equipment and a diplomancer in charge.

[liquidformat]

lots of maths!

Shadowpocalypse seems pretty Necromancer/BBEG dependent to really work, I think the biggest issue for Shadowpocalypse is oceans. Granted I have always been perplexed why they don't have explicit weakness to sunlight like vampires that seems like an oversight.

[masamune1]

Earth (or a version of Earth at least) canonically exists in older versions of DnD; it's just considered a low magic setting that is rather out of the way.

For the purposes of this thread I'm assuming that the normal rules of DnD magic etc do apply, and the only reason Earth doesn't have the stuff you see in Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms etc is that we are just a "backwater" setting of sorts.

I don't want Ssazz Tam to show up and then "poof" out of existence just because liches aren't real, after all.

So, assume that us on Earth "can" do pretty much anything you see in any other DnD setting, but we just "haven't" because we don't know about it or haven't discovered it or worked out how it works yet.

[Pezzo]

So, assume that us on Earth "can" do pretty much anything you see in any other DnD setting, but we just "haven't" because we don't know about it or haven't discovered it or worked out how it works yet.

I don't think that could work, a cat in DnD can drop a level 1 commoner with a full attack, here on earth it would lose 100% against any kid.

[Doctor Despair]

Maybe lack of magic has led to a subtrace of just absolutely swole humanoids with big strength and con boosts. That way we can beat cats :smalltongue:

[masamune1]

I don't think that could work, a cat in DnD can drop a level 1 commoner with a full attack, here on earth it would lose 100% against any kid.

I think you underestimate the wrath of the common housecat.

[The Glyphstone]

I think its less likely we have super-buff humans, and more that Commoners are incredibly weak. Any Earth human adult will be at least Expert 1, Commoner would reflect a child or someone severely malnourished.

[liquidformat]

I think its less likely we have super-buff humans, and more that Commoners are incredibly weak. Any Earth human adult will be at least Expert 1, Commoner would reflect a child or someone severely malnourished.

This has always bugged me, for example why is commoner strictly worse than 1 humanoid rhd? Shouldn't those be the same thing?

Also another important point is whether a d&d cat (or any d&d animal for that matter) are the same as earth cats or are we just calling them a cat because the two creatures closely resemble each other even though they are genetically different.

Also D&D is like living in Australia everything can and might try to kill you...

[Gnaeus]

I think whether shadows could or not, wights absolutely could. Wights are slightly more intelligent than humans. If they fan out some will soon be out of 100% kill by nuke range. Wights can read maps. Wights can pick up weapons and use them as well as humans can. It's basically a typical zombiepocalypse scenario except the zombies kill the vast majority of people in one hit, see in the dark, are stealthier and more observant than most people, communicate with each other, and are absolutely capable of stowing onto or otherwise using human transportation, weapons, keys, setting buildings on fire and ambushing people who flee, listening to the radio, walking up riverbeds to the next population center etc. You CAN kill a wight with a gun, they are only about 5 times tougher than a human. But once the first police checkpoints are overrun wights will be shooting back at you.

[ben-zayb]

I think its less likely we have super-buff humans, and more that Commoners are incredibly weak. Any Earth human adult will be at least Expert 1, Commoner would reflect a child or someone severely malnourished.The average adult will also likely have more than 1HD to reflect progression in real-life skills/profession.

[Kurald Galain]

Wights are slightly more intelligent than humans.

Wights are int 11; humans are int 3 through 18 (and up, if level 4+ and/or Pathfinder and/or middle age). Humans win this one by a wide margin.

[Doctor Despair]

Wights are int 11; humans are int 3 through 18 (and up, if level 4+ and/or Pathfinder). Humans win this one by a wide margin.

The average human is int 10, but due to age categories will average 11 throughout its lifespan (assuming they don't die prematurely). They're honestly probably comparable.

[Liquor Box]

The real issue is sneakiness plus abilities we aren't aware of much less have technology in place to deal with. For example let's look at a changeling enchanter; they can change their appearance on the fly looking like a whole different person in seconds; have magical abilities that can make people change their decision or just dominate them. It wouldn't as I said before be hard for such a monster/villain to infiltrate a UN meeting where all the heads of state of the world are present and influence/dominate people as they please. That is the real danger of sneakiness.

Also like I pointed out it doesn't take that much magic for someone to convince the religious world that they are the second coming of real world religious figures and an industrious caster could do so in relatively short order.

While I agree once the world is exposed to magic and magical things it wouldn't take that long to start utilizing magic and come up with ways to counter everything. However, it is a question of time, if the world was hit with magic but the invaders were stealthy about their innovation we might not even notice the existence of magic in the world until its too late.

I think those abilities would be less useful than you give them credit for. For example, the changling might be able to change their physical form, but I think it would take a long time for them to be able to imitate real human's mannerisms and style of dress. They wouldn't know the languages, so they wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone - and although I understand they can learn languages quickly there are thousands of languages on Earth.

I don't know how you think that a changling can simply change others' minds - I see nothing inherent in their race that allows them to do that. Do you have an actual villian in mind. Or are you intending to make a build and optimise in particularly for infiltrating earth,

Anyway dominate person, charm person, suggestion all require a common language.

The heads of state do not congregate at the UN, ambassadors do, who have little power themselves. Anyway, UN headquarters would have heavy security, requiring photo ID, passcodes etc. How would the changling even know he needed them. How would it know where the UN building is, when they are meeting, or even what the UN is. It doesn't know how to use the internet.

I don't think your idea around religion would work either. But I suggest we cannot discuss that idea without breaking the forum rules.

How would the changling even travel. They don't know what aeroplanes are, they don't have a bank account (or understand what a bank account is), they have no passport and don't even know what one is know to steal one.

The more i think about it, the more i think the changling would be less capable of destroying the world than a normal human from earth.



It would take 700 weeks (10 years give or take) for an army of shadows to have a chance, by flying randomly, to get anyway except in the general vicinity of their creation and be of any danger (yay, another global warming analogy). If you act in a month, a Tsar Bomba should wipe out all but very few shadows, then you can send soldiers to take care of the rest "by hand". With a randomly marching army of shadows, there is absolutely no chance that they could reach a city in any meaningful amount of time, and that's not even factoring the fact that they could also go up and get lost in space. Then again, if someone guided or baited a shadow from a city to another, that may be much faster and the world could be destroyed in a matter of months.

I appreciate the analysis. So, even on the worst case scenario, earthlings would have time to respond to the shadows.

On the best case scenario, Shadows would act per their description, and wouldn't even fly around randomly, instead lurking in a single place waiting for people to come by. Maybe that's why the shadowpocolyse never happened in DnD worlds.


We have sneakiness and propaganda. We don't have outright mind control. "Hey General, I am totally your President and absolutely not an impostor. I suggest that you order the tanks to roll before your rival can do the same. Also, you've told me before that you think this is an excellent idea. But this is a secret mission that I can't acknowledge openly. In fact I'll have to publicly denounce you after it happens, but don't worry, that's all part of the plan. Stick to it no matter what, you'll be hailed as a hero when it's over."

I think there's almost no chance of this working.

The issue of language is the first problem. I question whether a DnD spell like Tongues would enable someone to learn a language that doesn't exist in the DnDverse.

But putting that aside, and putting aside that a creature not of this world would not be able to mimic mannerisms and style of dress, the president doesn't just rock up to the general's house and tell them to attack. There are checks to prevent someone from impersonating the president.

How does the sneak even know who to talk to and who to imitate? It's not like he can use the internet. How does he get to the capitol - walk? He doesn't know how to use a phone or any similar means of long distance communication?

If the sneak tried what you suggested I think there's much more chance of him getting killed or captured than there is of him actually accomplishing anything.


Super-simplified, but you get the idea. "General, mad with power, goes rogue" is not a headline that we'd question all that much. Repeat that a few times, gradually escalating the seriousness of the attacks, and we'll blast ourselves back into the middle ages. Except for that one country, that still has modern equipment and a diplomancer in charge.

Can I ask which DnD villain you are thinking of using for your diplomancer? Or are you assuming someone optimised for the task at hand.


Earth (or a version of Earth at least) canonically exists in older versions of DnD; it's just considered a low magic setting that is rather out of the way.

For the purposes of this thread I'm assuming that the normal rules of DnD magic etc do apply, and the only reason Earth doesn't have the stuff you see in Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms etc is that we are just a "backwater" setting of sorts.

I don't want Ssazz Tam to show up and then "poof" out of existence just because liches aren't real, after all.

So, assume that us on Earth "can" do pretty much anything you see in any other DnD setting, but we just "haven't" because we don't know about it or haven't discovered it or worked out how it works yet.

Are those versions of modern earth, or medieval earth? Which are you thinking of?

If it's modern earth, I assume we have no means of getting to the DnD world otherwise we could just nuke the whole thing.


I think whether shadows could or not, wights absolutely could. Wights are slightly more intelligent than humans. If they fan out some will soon be out of 100% kill by nuke range. Wights can read maps. Wights can pick up weapons and use them as well as humans can. It's basically a typical zombiepocalypse scenario except the zombies kill the vast majority of people in one hit, see in the dark, are stealthier and more observant than most people, communicate with each other, and are absolutely capable of stowing onto or otherwise using human transportation, weapons, keys, setting buildings on fire and ambushing people who flee, listening to the radio, walking up riverbeds to the next population center etc. You CAN kill a wight with a gun, they are only about 5 times tougher than a human. But once the first police checkpoints are overrun wights will be shooting back at you.

The biggest problem with wights is that they do lose the main advantage of shadows - incorporeality. As such, the can be easily killed by a person with a gun.

A few other points:

Wight's are about as intelligent as an average person. I do wonder whether DnD humans would be as intelligent as earth humans thogh, given that we are probably better at nurturing intelligence.
They could read maps in a limited way I suppose. They wouldn't understand the language, and might have trouble determining where they are. They don't usually have any particular skills. How would an ordinary person do when dropped into a world trying to figure out where they are on a world map. Anyway, how would they get a map?
Weapon proficiency is a feat isn;t it? It's a feat wights don't have. While I can get that they might be able to use a club, I don't think that extends to using a gun. A person of average intelligence can't pick up a gun and start using it, and I think it would be even harder for a wight who doesn't know what one is.
Why would wights kill the vast majority of people in one hit? Are you assuming DnD rules suddenly start to apply to the real world and we therefore all have levels? A wight does as much damage as a person with a knife
How would wight's use human transportation. How would they pay? Would they even recognise most forms of human transportation for what it is.
How would a wight know how to listen to a radio.
You suggest that wights are five times tougher than the police at a checkpoint. Are you translating real world police into DnD levels and HP and then assuming they are no more than level 1 warriors?It seems to me that if you translate them into DnD rules, they would be higher.

[masamune1]

Are those versions of modern earth, or medieval earth? Which are you thinking of?

If it's modern earth, I assume we have no means of getting to the DnD world otherwise we could just nuke the whole thing.




It's modern Earth, and the premise was that a single DnD monster or villain somehow finds their way here and what is the strongest or more dangerous we would still stand a chance against?

It's not an all-out war with Faerun or anything like that.

[Liquor Box]

It's modern Earth, and the premise was that a single DnD monster or villain somehow finds their way here and what is the strongest or more dangerous we would still stand a chance against?

It's not an all-out war with Faerun or anything like that.

Right.

Do we interpret their skills and abilities as how it would fit into our reality? Or do we shoehorn our reality into DnD rules?

[masamune1]

Right.

Do we interpret their skills and abilities as how it would fit into our reality? Or do we shoehorn our reality into DnD rules?

The latter.

No point in summoning a giant monster if it will collapse under its own weight in our world, after all.

[Gnaeus]

Wights are int 11; humans are int 3 through 18 (and up, if level 4+ and/or Pathfinder and/or middle age). Humans win this one by a wide margin.

I'm sorry, I used the technical, not general term. wights are slightly smarter than the average human . With an average mental stat of 13.I don't mean they are super geniuses. I mean they can likely brainstorm ideas and tricks as well as/better than your average person. I'm going to trick that person into an ambush, or I'm going to hide during the day and hunt at night, or I'm going to sneak onto the back of that train and not come out for 12 hours are entirely within their ability. Oh, and globally there are still more young than old.



The biggest problem with wights is that they do lose the main advantage of shadows - incorporeality. As such, the can be easily killed by a person with a gun.

A few other points:

Wight's are about as intelligent as an average person. I do wonder whether DnD humans would be as intelligent as earth humans thogh, given that we are probably better at nurturing intelligence.
They could read maps in a limited way I suppose. They wouldn't understand the language, and might have trouble determining where they are. They don't usually have any particular skills. How would an ordinary person do when dropped into a world trying to figure out where they are on a world map. Anyway, how would they get a map?
Weapon proficiency is a feat isn;t it? It's a feat wights don't have. While I can get that they might be able to use a club, I don't think that extends to using a gun. A person of average intelligence can't pick up a gun and start using it, and I think it would be even harder for a wight who doesn't know what one is.
Why would wights kill the vast majority of people in one hit? Are you assuming DnD rules suddenly start to apply to the real world and we therefore all have levels? A wight does as much damage as a person with a knife
How would wight's use human transportation. How would they pay? Would they even recognise most forms of human transportation for what it is.
How would a wight know how to listen to a radio.
You suggest that wights are five times tougher than the police at a checkpoint. Are you translating real world police into DnD levels and HP and then assuming they are no more than level 1 warriors?It seems to me that if you translate them into DnD rules, they would be higher.


From what I see around me the average human has an intelligence penalty.

The first wight wouldn"t. He would have no way to know what a radio or RPG was. The next 7 billion would know the same way a wight knows what the capital of Thay is or how a crossbow works. The average human doesn't have ranks in drive. The wight that was my neighbor knows average human stuff known by people without specialist ranks including knowledges at rank 0.

Of course we have levels, or level equivalents. You might as well argue that the wights are unkillable because our weapons don't do damage in HP, or spells don't affect us because we don't have saving throws. However you translate it, the wight hit you and suck out your life force thing would still work.

The average cop receives less combat practice than the average English peasant had longbow practice. By a lot. I would not assume the average cop was over second level. With a lot of firsts.

Wights can use any weapon. Some weapons they have a -4 to hit with. Fortunately, they are also slightly more accurate as portrayed by dex and BAB than an average human, and guns are touch attacks anyway. Which is kind of a wash for the wights because on the one hand, they can shoot quite effectively, but on the other hand, they aren't 20% harder to hit than a human because they have Natural Armor. Only the first wight doesn't know what a gun is

[Liquor Box]

The latter.

No point in summoning a giant monster if it will collapse under its own weight in our world, after all.

Oh, i didn't mean that. Of course their skills should still function in our world.

I meant more like in the discussion about guns. Does an automatic weapon fire 30 shots a round, each bullet doing xdx dmg, with a hit role based on our guess of what a human's level would be. Or do we think of bullet damage the way it would work in real life, and base chances to hit on how consistently shooters hit with guns in real life.

[masamune1]

Oh, i didn't mean that. Of course their skills should still function in our world.

I meant more like in the discussion about guns. Does an automatic weapon fire 30 shots a round, each bullet doing xdx dmg, with a hit role based on our guess of what a human's level would be. Or do we think of bullet damage the way it would work in real life, and base chances to hit on how consistently shooters hit with guns in real life.

Real life, but let's assume that the more HP someone has the more durable they are anyway.

This is the sort of thing that would complicate DnD if you thought about it too much anyway- like, what would happen if you came across a character with 5000 HP and you slit their throat in their sleep?

Basically, just don't overthink it too much.

[Telonius]

I think there's almost no chance of this working.

The issue of language is the first problem. I question whether a DnD spell like Tongues would enable someone to learn a language that doesn't exist in the DnDverse.

But putting that aside, and putting aside that a creature not of this world would not be able to mimic mannerisms and style of dress, the president doesn't just rock up to the general's house and tell them to attack. There are checks to prevent someone from impersonating the president.

How does the sneak even know who to talk to and who to imitate? It's not like he can use the internet. How does he get to the capitol - walk? He doesn't know how to use a phone or any similar means of long distance communication?

If the sneak tried what you suggested I think there's much more chance of him getting killed or captured than there is of him actually accomplishing anything.




I'd disagree. First of all, if we're assuming Fireball works, we've got to assume that Tongues works too. And like I said, "super simplified." The sneak is not an idiot. He (or she, or whatever) won't just walk up to a military base and try to start a war. The sneak is a sneak. They'll gather information first, research, observe, and make the plan. If necessary, they'll ask questions (and make people forget they were asked) to figure out what the situation is.

If the sneak has a Hat of Disguise (or Alter Self), he looks like a lunatic only until he sees another person whose style he can copy. The sneak absolutely can use the internet - or learn how to, after about ten minutes questioning a random person. Same with any other normal modern convenience. He probably wouldn't really even need a spell for it; that would be a regular old Gather Information check, at a pretty low DC. To get to the capitol, he goes to the bus station and asks very nicely for someone to buy him a ticket.

For pulling off the mind control, if it's a low-level spell like Suggestion, it only has to sound reasonable, and align with something the target wants to do anyway. It doesn't have to be airtight logic. It just has to work long enough for the target to be in too deep to turn back. For a higher-level option, he just has to be together with the target in a place where he can cast unobtrusively.

[Doctor Despair]

I think those abilities would be less useful than you give them credit for. For example, the changling might be able to change their physical form, but I think it would take a long time for them to be able to imitate real human's mannerisms and style of dress.

That's actually included in the disguise check, which is why there's a synergy with bluff. Creatures get a bonus depending on how well they know the subject to know you aren't acting exactly right, but a high enough check (or a feat dip) negates that issue.


I'd disagree. First of all, if we're assuming Fireball works, we've got to assume that Tongues works too. And like I said, "super simplified." The sneak is not an idiot. He (or she, or whatever) won't just walk up to a military base and try to start a war. The sneak is a sneak. They'll gather information first, research, observe, and make the plan. If necessary, they'll ask questions (and make people forget they were asked) to figure out what the situation is.

If the sneak has a Hat of Disguise (or Alter Self), he looks like a lunatic only until he sees another person whose style he can copy. The sneak absolutely can use the internet - or learn how to, after about ten minutes questioning a random person. Same with any other normal modern convenience. He probably wouldn't really even need a spell for it; that would be a regular old Gather Information check, at a pretty low DC. To get to the capitol, he goes to the bus station and asks very nicely for someone to buy him a ticket.

For pulling off the mind control, if it's a low-level spell like Suggestion, it only has to sound reasonable, and align with something the target wants to do anyway. It doesn't have to be airtight logic. It just has to work long enough for the target to be in too deep to turn back. For a higher-level option, he just has to be together with the target in a place where he can cast unobtrusively.

To add onto this: it's a DC25 decipher script check to read a page in an unfamiliar language. If they can get a +15 modifier to pass that every time, they can learn almost anything they want at their local library -- including how to use the internet to learn everything else.

I also agree that tongues definitely works for all languages if magic works at all.

[Liquor Box]

From what I see around me the average human has an intelligence penalty.

Based on their description in SRD, Wight's have an intelligence of 11, which is effectively average for a human without any modifiers. I suggest that real world humans are smarter than that, even if that is not your perception from interactions you've had, because of the nurturing we give to intelligence in children.


The first wight wouldn"t. He would have no way to know what a radio or RPG was. The next 7 billion would know the same way a wight knows what the capital of Thay is or how a crossbow works. The average human doesn't have ranks in drive. The wight that was my neighbor knows average human stuff known by people without specialist ranks including knowledges at rank 0.

So you are suggesting that wight's retain the skills and knowledge of the being they were created out of? Do the rules suggest that anywhere? All I can see is where it says about the spawn "They do not possess any of the abilities they had in life.". I can also see that they have listed skills and languages, unlike (for example) vampires which know the skills that the base creature knew.

Unless I'm missing something, Wight's do not have the knowledge and skills they had in real life.


Of course we have levels, or level equivalents. You might as well argue that the wights are unkillable because our weapons don't do damage in HP, or spells don't affect us because we don't have saving throws. However you translate it, the wight hit you and suck out your life force thing would still work.

Ok, that's fair. But there's no reason to assume that our life force is equivalent to lvl 1.


The average cop receives less combat practice than the average English peasant had longbow practice. By a lot. I would not assume the average cop was over second level. With a lot of firsts.

Maybe, but what has that got to do with anything. If we translated those English peasants who were skilled longbowmen into DnD they might have also been higher then level 1.

But I still think police would often be higher. You don't gain levels and experience solely from fighting. Police deal with conflict frequently, often daily. They resolve lots of conflicts without fighting, and every time someone resists arrest they have to subdue them. I see no reason to restrict them to levels one or two if we were to imagine them as having levels.


Wights can use any weapon. Some weapons they have a -4 to hit with. Fortunately, they are also slightly more accurate as portrayed by dex and BAB than an average human, and guns are touch attacks anyway. Which is kind of a wash for the wights because on the one hand, they can shoot quite effectively, but on the other hand, they aren't 20% harder to hit than a human because they have Natural Armor. Only the first wight doesn't know what a gun is

If you take a very rules focused perspective they'd be able to use a gun with the penalty. If you take a more realistic perspective, then they would simply not know how they work. They wouldn't be able to turn the safety on or off, they wouldn't be able to reload. If they tried to figure out how they worked they'd be as likely to shoot before the understood which end the bullet comes out of.

The original poster has now confirmed that we should consider these sorts of things using the way things work in real life, not applying DnD rules. See below.


Real life, but let's assume that the more HP someone has the more durable they are anyway.

This is the sort of thing that would complicate DnD if you thought about it too much anyway- like, what would happen if you came across a character with 5000 HP and you slit their throat in their sleep?

Basically, just don't overthink it too much.
So real life, except so far as the DnD creature's abilities still work.


I'd disagree. First of all, if we're assuming Fireball works, we've got to assume that Tongues works too.

Tongues does work - it allows the user to know all the languages present in the DnD setting. However, I don't think it would work if you moved someone to a different setting where there were languages which could not have been contemplated when the spell was created.


And like I said, "super simplified." The sneak is not an idiot. He (or she, or whatever) won't just walk up to a military base and try to start a war. The sneak is a sneak. They'll gather information first, research, observe, and make the plan. If necessary, they'll ask questions (and make people forget they were asked) to figure out what the situation is.

How will they gather information? Several of the same problems apply. Even if we ignore the language issue, there are concepts in real life that don't exist in DnD. And most people wont know the sort of information the sneak would need.


If the sneak has a Hat of Disguise (or Alter Self), he looks like a lunatic only until he sees another person whose style he can copy. The sneak absolutely can use the internet - or learn how to, after about ten minutes questioning a random person. Same with any other normal modern convenience. He probably wouldn't really even need a spell for it; that would be a regular old Gather Information check, at a pretty low DC. To get to the capitol, he goes to the bus station and asks very nicely for someone to buy him a ticket.

How can he use the internet? What is the internet? In game rules, you'd need skill ranks and you wouldn't be able to use it untrained. In real life you need to learn how to use it. If you found a person from a pre-industrial society they wouldn't be able to use it either, not without significant time learning how the modern world works.

Even copying clothing styles is more difficult that you think. People with decades of experience living in the real world try to copy styles and fail.


For pulling off the mind control, if it's a low-level spell like Suggestion, it only has to sound reasonable, and align with something the target wants to do anyway. It doesn't have to be airtight logic. It just has to work long enough for the target to be in too deep to turn back. For a higher-level option, he just has to be together with the target in a place where he can cast unobtrusively.

Well they also have a chance to resist (a save in DnD terms), but they often require a joint language for direction. But the bigger problem is that the sneak wouldn't know what to ask them to do, wouldn't know how to describe things in a meaningful way to their target, and wouldn't know how to access a target of any real power.


Can I suggest you actually sketch our a build you think could do this, and then go through how they'd accomplish it step by step. Instead of just saying they'd be sneaker then persuade/enchant a general to go to war. Are you thinking of years of learning about society and gaining new skills? i guess isnce the question is what the strongest villian earth could beat, what do you think is the weakest villain we couldn't?


That's actually included in the disguise check, which is why there's a synergy with bluff. Creatures get a bonus depending on how well they know the subject to know you aren't acting exactly right, but a high enough check (or a feat dip) negates that issue.

Well that is a rule based explanation, and the OP has now specified that he prefers us to apply the way the real world works to DnD abilities, instead of trying to apply DnD rules to the real world.

but from a rules perspective, I think you are right - a penalty for a subject that the disguised one is unfamiliar with. A very large penalty when they come from a completely different world and have a culture and norm alien to the disguised one. At the same time, I think it's reasonable to assume the sort of people who provide security to the UN or the president have high spot checks to oppose the disguise check.

[Gavinfoxx]

Does the Conyers Falchion count as a magical vorpal sword, due to the legends surrounding it? What about other examples of legendary swords?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Does the Conyers Falchion count as a magical vorpal sword, due to the legends surrounding it? What about other examples of legendary swords?If legends are real, I'd like to see what could stand up to Sun Wukong, The Monkey King. He makes even epic characters look pitifully weak.

[Doctor Despair]

If legends are real, I'd like to see what could stand up to Sun Wukong, The Monkey King. He makes even epic characters look pitifully weak.

Pretty fun to play in League of Legends, but he's kinda fallen out of favor due to power creep from what I remember

[AvatarVecna]

I completely agree with you about the dragon. Even a few men automatic weapons who only hits 5% of the time and causes low damage per hit, will still get through those hit points when you realise they can empty a full clip (usually 30 bullets) every round.

Minor nitpick: out of 400 attacks on such a dragon, 19 will hit and 1 will crit. The crit is the only one that has a chance of bypassing DR without us arbitrarily declaring guns to be magic. 4d8 vs DR 20 will average dealing 4144 damage across 4096 crits. As the dragon in question has 717 hp, it should take ~708 crits to kill it, which means ~283477 bullets put into it via normal attack rolls. With a platoon of 100 soldiers making 30 attacks per round (which isn't how D&D simulates automatic weapons, but whatever), it's still going to take 94 rounds to kill a dragon. Assuming the dragon isn't picking soldiers off with natural weapons or breath weapons while this occurs. Which it would be.


But I disagree about the Shadow. It depends on how the rules apply - you ask in your own post whether guns count as magic. If not, nuclear weapons would seem to - and one Nuke could wipe out those entire million shadows.

My question about guns counting as magic is largely a joke at the idea of somebody making this specific counterargument. The point of it was that even if somebody wanted to argue in bad faith that IRL guns are so good that should count as magic, it wouldn't actually make that much difference in the ability of normal firearm-wielding soldiers to penetrate a dragon's scales. We have weapons that are several orders of magnitude better than bullets at penetrating through that kind of protection, so whether the handheld weapons are arbitrarily being given the ability to do so doesn't actually matter. Whether sniper rifles can penetrate dragon scales is mostly irrelevant to the question, because AA Cannons and SAMs are more than just a little stronger than guns - they might just blow the whole dragon out of the sky.

Nukes are not magic. They do not extend their effect onto the ethereal plane. They are not an interdimensional threat according to the physical rules of our reality, and 3.5 does not have any rules regarding radiation that would otherwise overrule the IRL stuff. You can't nuke ghosts just because nukes are powerful.


But beyond that, I don't think Shadows behave the way you describe, relentlessly running down a human after another. The rules say "Shadows lurk in dark places, waiting for living prey to happen by."

You are correct that a single shadow acting on its own isn't going to necessarily kickstart an apocalypse like this. This is part of the reason that shadowpocalypses don't occur in D&D either. Shadows aren't so stupid that they can't seek shelter if the rain starts being painful, but they're still fairly stupid by human standards. However, the shadows that a shadow spawns are controlled by the shadow that spawned them, so all you really need to end the world is one person smart enough to both create (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createGreaterUndead.htm) and aim (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/commandUndead.htm) them.


Those sorts of powers, if they worked on earth, would be useful. It would possibly make it the most successful serial killer in history. But I don't think it would be able to destroy or take over the world.

Succubus' method of ending the world would be pitifully easy and would be accomplished faster than basically any other method short of epic magic or questionable rules abuses.


Bluff +19, Concentration +10, Diplomacy +12, Disguise +17* (+19 acting), Escape Artist +10, Hide +10, Intimidate +19, Knowledge (any one) +12, Listen +19, Move Silently +10, Search +12, Spot +19, Survival +2 (+4 following tracks), Use Rope +1 (+3 with bindings)

...

Spell-Like Abilities
At will—charm monster (DC 22), detect good, detect thoughts (DC 20), ethereal jaunt (self plus 50 pounds of objects only), suggestion (DC 21), greater teleport (self plus 50 pounds of objects only). Caster level 12th. The save DCs are Charisma-based.

Summon Demon (Sp)
Once per day a succubus can attempt to summon 1 vrock with a 30% chance of success. This ability is the equivalent of a 3rd-level spell.

Change Shape (Su)
An succubus can assume the form of any Small or Medium humanoid.

Tongues (Su)
A succubus has a permanent tongues ability (as the spell, caster level 12th). Succubi usually use verbal communication with mortals.

At-Will Greater Teleport gets her wherever she needs to be. Tongues overcomes any communication barriers. Detect Thoughts lets her know what forms are good for getting close to powerful politicians, and Change Shape lets her do it. From there, Bluff, Diplomacy, at-will Charm Monster, and at-will Suggestion will give the succubus a good chance at getting the hapless fools to do whatever she wants, including ending the world via mutually-assured destruction. Because of how MAD works, she only really has to pull this off on one person with nukes, and the rest of the world will add their own logs to the nuclear fire. I don't know why a succubus would want to cause a nuclear apocalypse, but unless IRL politicians are unusually-resistant to magic mind control, it would not be very difficult for a succubus to pull off.


Agree with this. If we change the rules of the real world so invisibility or incorporeality or whatever exists, then it seems very likely that we'd quickly find a way to counteract it. Like Ghostbusters, something strange appears in our neighbourhood, and a few weeks later people have invented ray guns that shoot ghosts.

Invisibility I agree on. At least partially because things like "throw flour into the room" is a good way to deal with invisible foes that still have a physical presence. However, for incorporeality, I think you're giving IRL scientists too much credit. Despite how your post seems to be acting, Ghostbusters is not a documentary, or even particularly realistic. We're not going to have people suddenly inventing a perfect solution within a few weeks of people discovering that ghosts are, in fact, real things that exist.


Modern firearms, or something equivalent to the firearms of the 1400s?

For 3.5, the specific weapon I used in my previous post was a modern gun. PF "modern" firearms (read: early 20th century) work similarly to PF's renaissance firearms with a few nominal differences, and this is largely because in PF firearms are designed to be a bit more a normal part of gameplay, whereas 3.5 firearms are kinda optional rules so they don't have to be balanced against other weapons. I used the 3.5 version in my previous post because it had rules for dealing with automatic fire.




Exotic Weapons (Firearms)
Dmg (S)
Dmg (M)
Crit


Rifle, Automatic
2d6
2d8
x2




Rifle, Automatic: An automatic rifle can fire thirty times before it needs reloading. Releasing an empty magazine and inserting a new one is a move action. As an attack, an automatic rifle can instead spray a space 10 feet across with ten bullets. If the attacker succeeds on an attack roll against AC 10, everyone in that space must make a DC 15 Reflex save or take the weapon’s damage.

As I alluded to earlier: just because an IRL soldier can put 30 bullets down range, doesn't mean they're all going to be hitting, and doesn't mean they're being individually aimed at a specific person as much as sprayed in the general area of a target. Simulating automatic fire is is better done via AoE, which is exactly how they've done it.


If Shadows were some how driven to move at their movement speed toward the next city, rather than lurking and waiting like their description, how long do you think it would take? I haven't worked it out, but I'm expecting days to move between relatively nearby cities.

Government's can make the decision to launch nukes pretty quickly, because they have to be able to launch before the enemy nukes arrive. Nuclear winter won't be a problem unless the shadows are already widespread.

Unrelated to my earlier opinion that nukes don't work because nukes are not an interdimensional threat, I do find it kinda funny that the solution for a slowly-replicating plague of untouchable undead is "if the planet is dying anyway, we may as well kill it ourselves". If China launches a nuke, the rest of the world isn't gonna be like "let's wait a minute before we do something rash, maybe they nuked themselves, or maybe they had a really good reason, like they're trying to nuke just the ghosts".


Remember, incorporeals have to remain adjacent to the surface, so the water filtering down into ground water could still possibly get at them.

Additionally, it would probably stop shadows from crossing oceans and seas (as ocean storms would strike, leaving them with nowhere to hide).

What? I'm not seeing anything about that on the SRD, in the DMG, in the Rules Compendium, or even in PFSRD. The closest I can see is that incorporeal creatures can sense creatures within a square of them even when the incorporeal creature is fully within an object, so being more than one square from the surface is less than ideal for hunting purposes...but I can't see anywhere that makes it illegal. Do you have a quote for this rule?


If there are enough shadows and they are considered to go in a straight line except when feeding, you can approximate the infection to a circle growing at a constant 40ft/6s, or 7.2km/h (around 5mph) speed. The world has a half-circumference of 20 000km, which means the shadows will cover the entire earth from one city in 2800 hours, or 4 months. To go from a big city to the next (let's say 100km apart), they would take around 14 hours.

If, on the other hand, they don't know where they're going and moving randomly, then the distance from their starting point evolves as the square root of the time since they started. So, after a day (or 14 400 rounds), they would have, in average travelled sqrt(14400)*40=4800 ft, or 1.44 kilometers from the initial city. The bulk of the shadow horde would only reach a 100km-away city in years.

Obviously the average is not representative, and from millions of shadows, there may be a good chance one reaches a nearby city. The chance for a shadow to be at least 100km (8333*40ft) away from the starting point after a week (~100 000 rounds) is :

P=Int(8333<r<+inf) dr r/1e5 exp(-r²/1e5)
P=Int(7e7<r²<+inf) d(r²) 1/(2e5) exp(-r²/1e5)
P=Int(7e2<K<inf) d(K=r²/1e5) exp(-K)/2
P=exp(-7e2)/2~10^(-300)

It would take 700 weeks (10 years give or take) for an army of shadows to have a chance, by flying randomly, to get anyway except in the general vicinity of their creation and be of any danger (yay, another global warming analogy). If you act in a month, a Tsar Bomba should wipe out all but very few shadows, then you can send soldiers to take care of the rest "by hand". With a randomly marching army of shadows, there is absolutely no chance that they could reach a city in any meaningful amount of time, and that's not even factoring the fact that they could also go up and get lost in space. Then again, if someone guided or baited a shadow from a city to another, that may be much faster and the world could be destroyed in a matter of months.

This is a useful calculation, although if shadows are an actual threat, it's likely that they're directed. This cuts down on the random chance necessary for them to find a place to wreck havoc. Also the whole army doesn't have to go to one place, they can all go in different directions once a whole city is suborned. Additionally, if DD doesn't actually have a 3.5 quote for that rule about remaining close to the surface, an incorporeal creature directed by a smart enough person could just take a straight-line path through the planet. That would cut down on travel time a bit (not a ton, but still).

Of course, if the shadows are dangerous because they're being aimed by a wizard, the speed at which shadows take over the world largely depends on the speed at which the wizard is 'porting around the world creating new shadows in new cities, but that's a much harder thing to calc out.

[Doctor Despair]

Here you go, AVecna:


An incorporeal creature can’t pass through a force effect. It
can pass through and operate in water as easily as it does in
air. Such a creature can enter or pass through solid objects, but
it must remain adjacent to the object’s exterior, which means
it can’t pass directly through an object whose space is larger
than its own. It has an innate sense of direction, allowing it
to move at full speed even when it can’t see.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Pretty fun to play in League of Legends, but he's kinda fallen out of favor due to power creep from what I rememberThis Sun Wukong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_King), the actual mythological figure, not a video game character. Y'know, the one who could shatter mountains and single-handedly fight against all the legions of heaven to their ignominious defeat, and who was bested only by the literally omnipotent Buddha?

[AvatarVecna]

I think whether shadows could or not, wights absolutely could. Wights are slightly more intelligent than humans. If they fan out some will soon be out of 100% kill by nuke range. Wights can read maps. Wights can pick up weapons and use them as well as humans can. It's basically a typical zombiepocalypse scenario except the zombies kill the vast majority of people in one hit, see in the dark, are stealthier and more observant than most people, communicate with each other, and are absolutely capable of stowing onto or otherwise using human transportation, weapons, keys, setting buildings on fire and ambushing people who flee, listening to the radio, walking up riverbeds to the next population center etc. You CAN kill a wight with a gun, they are only about 5 times tougher than a human. But once the first police checkpoints are overrun wights will be shooting back at you.

Ehhhh idk about that. The reason shadows had a chance is because we just lack the weaponry capable of actually dealing with them, and they can self-replicate faster than most similar undead. Wights are basically just a classic zombie apocalypse. Except most zombie apocalypse fictions start at "the horde has somehow overcome 90% of the world before we could do anything" as opposed to "zombie outbreak at one small lab in texas was quickly dealt with after the zombies were shot with enough ammunition to bury them in it". Wights would have an edge over normal zombies in that they're smart enough to talk and use technology, but they still look and smell like a corpse.

Wights are a good deal tougher than normal humans, but not anywhere nearly to the degree our earlier dragon example was. They're not any faster, and can't walk through walls the way shadows can, so it's gonna be harder for them to chase down fleeing humans - they're only advantage is that they can go 24/7 while the humans will have to sleep eventually. But that only matters for the individual cases. The first time the wights got on the radar of the military, they're getting bombed out of existence - and unlike shadows, there's really no question whatsoever about if wights can be bombed. Wights are physical creatures, and they can die to bombs like any physical creature can.

Shadows only really have a chance because modern humanity does not possess and is not close to possessing the ability to shoot into another dimension.


Here you go, AVecna:

Many thanks, I felt I was going crazy cuz I kinda remembered something like that? I thought it was a 4e thing when I couldn't find it.

[AvatarVecna]

I think there's almost no chance of this working.

The issue of language is the first problem. I question whether a DnD spell like Tongues would enable someone to learn a language that doesn't exist in the DnDverse.

A lot of the stuff in this post is something I mostly address in my discussion about the succubus in particular, but I just wanna kinda point and laugh that the counterargument's sole real line in the sand defense is "magic that lets you speak/understand any language, and be understood by any creature that speaks any language, doesn't work that way on earth because I don't want it to". Additionally, the stuff about how to act and dress is literally just "how bluff and disguise skills work".


But putting that aside, and putting aside that a creature not of this world would not be able to mimic mannerisms and style of dress, the president doesn't just rock up to the general's house and tell them to attack. There are checks to prevent someone from impersonating the president.

There are checks to prevent the president from abusing their power. But we're not dealing with a normal person using normal conversation skills to convince a general to nuke the world. We're talking mind control magic, and things even worse than magic. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0965.html) I don't think a succubus has enough to really do the deed, but it doesn't take that much bluff/diplomacy/disguise skill to be basically uncatchable. An elderly man disguising himself as a female baby is a -10 to the check, and that baby's mother would have a +10 circumstance to her Spot check to oppose it. But if the elderly man has 40 point advantage on her (or has a 30 point advantage and some kind of shapechanging ability), nothing I just said matters, and the woman believes this decrepit old man is in fact her baby girl.

Also, it's kinda hilarious to me that Disguise is opposed by Spot.

"Greetings, mister president! Actually wait, we have to check your identity..." *whips this out from 5 ft away* (https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/pirates/images/c/c2/Spyglass.jpg)


Can I ask which DnD villain you are thinking of using for your diplomancer? Or are you assuming someone optimised for the task at hand.

The original succubus suggestion is honestly scarily-good for it.

[Liquor Box]

Minor nitpick: out of 400 attacks on such a dragon, 19 will hit and 1 will crit. The crit is the only one that has a chance of bypassing DR without us arbitrarily declaring guns to be magic. 4d8 vs DR 20 will average dealing 4144 damage across 4096 crits. As the dragon in question has 717 hp, it should take ~708 crits to kill it, which means ~283477 bullets put into it via normal attack rolls. With a platoon of 100 soldiers making 30 attacks per round (which isn't how D&D simulates automatic weapons, but whatever), it's still going to take 94 rounds to kill a dragon. Assuming the dragon isn't picking soldiers off with natural weapons or breath weapons while this occurs. Which it would be.


For 3.5, the specific weapon I used in my previous post was a modern gun. PF "modern" firearms (read: early 20th century) work similarly to PF's renaissance firearms with a few nominal differences, and this is largely because in PF firearms are designed to be a bit more a normal part of gameplay, whereas 3.5 firearms are kinda optional rules so they don't have to be balanced against other weapons. I used the 3.5 version in my previous post because it had rules for dealing with automatic fire.As I alluded to earlier: just because an IRL soldier can put 30 bullets down range, doesn't mean they're all going to be hitting, and doesn't mean they're being individually aimed at a specific person as much as sprayed in the general area of a target. Simulating automatic fire is is better done via AoE, which is exactly how they've done it.

Sounds reasonable. The OP has now confirmed that we are not relying on DnD rules, we are just imagining how the creatures from the DnD world would fare in the real world with its abilities intacts. In other words, real world rules and physics apply. So guns in particular operate how they do in the real world.

If early 20th century weapons would hurt the dragon once on every twentieth hit, then I think reasonable to assume that modern assault rifles, if equipped with armor penetrating bullets, would do so much more freely.


My question about guns counting as magic is largely a joke at the idea of somebody making this specific counterargument. The point of it was that even if somebody wanted to argue in bad faith that IRL guns are so good that should count as magic, it wouldn't actually make that much difference in the ability of normal firearm-wielding soldiers to penetrate a dragon's scales. We have weapons that are several orders of magnitude better than bullets at penetrating through that kind of protection, so whether the handheld weapons are arbitrarily being given the ability to do so doesn't actually matter. Whether sniper rifles can penetrate dragon scales is mostly irrelevant to the question, because AA Cannons and SAMs are more than just a little stronger than guns - they might just blow the whole dragon out of the sky.

Understood, and very subtle


Nukes are not magic. They do not extend their effect onto the ethereal plane. They are not an interdimensional threat according to the physical rules of our reality, and 3.5 does not have any rules regarding radiation that would otherwise overrule the IRL stuff. You can't nuke ghosts just because nukes are powerful.

Aren't they? Given that other planes do not exist, we have no idea what will cross planes. There is no IRL stuff to overrule, because there is no interaction between a place with multiple planes and nuclear radiation (or nuclear force).

There is likewise no interaction in the rules. So we are left to imagine whether radiation and forcewaves are sorts of things that might cross into other planes. Do they seem analogous to the sorts of magic that do.

I suspect we'll be unable to agree on that, so perhaps best to park the question of whether nuclear force and radiation between you and I.


You are correct that a single shadow acting on its own isn't going to necessarily kickstart an apocalypse like this. This is part of the reason that shadowpocalypses don't occur in D&D either. Shadows aren't so stupid that they can't seek shelter if the rain starts being painful, but they're still fairly stupid by human standards. However, the shadows that a shadow spawns are controlled by the shadow that spawned them, so all you really need to end the world is one person smart enough to both create (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createGreaterUndead.htm) and aim (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/commandUndead.htm) them.

Ah, so the villain who comes here is not themselves a shadow, but a person. So they can be targeted. How do they travel?


Succubus' method of ending the world would be pitifully easy and would be accomplished faster than basically any other method short of epic magic or questionable rules abuses.

At-Will Greater Teleport gets her wherever she needs to be. Tongues overcomes any communication barriers. Detect Thoughts lets her know what forms are good for getting close to powerful politicians, and Change Shape lets her do it. From there, Bluff, Diplomacy, at-will Charm Monster, and at-will Suggestion will give the succubus a good chance at getting the hapless fools to do whatever she wants, including ending the world via mutually-assured destruction. Because of how MAD works, she only really has to pull this off on one person with nukes, and the rest of the world will add their own logs to the nuclear fire. I don't know why a succubus would want to cause a nuclear apocalypse, but unless IRL politicians are unusually-resistant to magic mind control, it would not be very difficult for a succubus to pull off.

Greater teleport does indeed solve one of the problems I think DnD visitors would face - knowing how to travel.

As noted in another post, I question Tongues applying to languages that don't exist in the DnD setting. Do new languages within the setting automatically get added to the languages Tongues can teach you. Most people don't seem agree with me about this point though.

I think what you have posted is the D20 version of Succubus, not the DnD version. The DnD version doesn't have change self, instead it has polymorph self. I don't know exactly how change self works, but polymorph lets you change to a human shape and select your features, but there's nothing inherent in the spell that allows you to look like a particular person. If does add +10 to disguise checks though (which is incorporated into the stats you posted). Would that be sufficient to fool the sorts of security that world leaders (of the type who are able to declare war), I'm not sure. There's the spot check of the security detail (whose spot checks for such things would be among the best in the world), then there's the possibility of various other technological measures (such as facial recognition tech). I know that verification of identity is required in some circumstances, but what circumstances and what sort of verification I don't know, and is probably secret.

I don;t see how charm monster would help with making someone launch nukes. Would you launch nukes if your friend asked you to do so? Suggestion is more likely, if it works. I don't know anyway to translate the chance of saving into the real world, except to simply mimic the rules. A national leader is likely to be amongst the highest level people in he land. They would probably be either an expert, and aristocrat or some other class that doesn't exist in the DnD setting (all of whom would have strong will saves). A 16 level aristocrat has +10 will save, plus the leader's wisdom (which you'd also expect to be high).

Beyond all that, it would take our succubus some time to work out the correct people are who have nukes, where they are, how to approach them. Even you, who have been living in this world for some years seem to think a single person can launch nukes, but I don't think that's so. There's a lot for the succubus to learn before it would be able to attempt the above. Some of that would probably be secret.

All up though, I agree that the Succubus might have a chance to cause a war in the way you describe, by mining an ordinary person for information, finding someone with a security clearance, and progressively working their way up to the really important folk. Whether it would accomplish that before making a mistake and being uncovered though, I ;m not so sure.


Invisibility I agree on. At least partially because things like "throw flour into the room" is a good way to deal with invisible foes that still have a physical presence. However, for incorporeality, I think you're giving IRL scientists too much credit. Despite how your post seems to be acting, Ghostbusters is not a documentary, or even particularly realistic. We're not going to have people suddenly inventing a perfect solution within a few weeks of people discovering that ghosts are, in fact, real things that exist.

Ghostbusters is as much a documentary to incorporeality as any other source. The ethereal plane doesn't exist, so who knows how long it would take us to figure out a way past it if it suddenly came into existence with the arrival of a DnD villain.


Unrelated to my earlier opinion that nukes don't work because nukes are not an interdimensional threat, I do find it kinda funny that the solution for a slowly-replicating plague of untouchable undead is "if the planet is dying anyway, we may as well kill it ourselves". If China launches a nuke, the rest of the world isn't gonna be like "let's wait a minute before we do something rash, maybe they nuked themselves, or maybe they had a really good reason, like they're trying to nuke just the ghosts".

Unrelated to your earlier speculation on how nukes might interact with other planes?

If China launches a nuke at one of its own cities, the world would not fire back. They wouldn't even know in real time I don't think, because the missile wouldn't follow a ballistic trajectory. Withou going into politics, there are countries in the world that launch the missiles that might carry nuclear warheads from time to time as tests.


A lot of the stuff in this post is something I mostly address in my discussion about the succubus in particular, but I just wanna kinda point and laugh that the counterargument's sole real line in the sand defense is "magic that lets you speak/understand any language, and be understood by any creature that speaks any language, doesn't work that way on earth because I don't want it to". Additionally, the stuff about how to act and dress is literally just "how bluff and disguise skills work".

This is simply false. I did say I questioned whether tongues would work (and gave reasons for it).

But at every step of the way I pointed out additional problems that would occur if the other poster disagreed with me about the language spell worked. The language barrier was one problem among many, and certainly not the sole line in the sand.


There are checks to prevent the president from abusing their power. But we're not dealing with a normal person using normal conversation skills to convince a general to nuke the world. We're talking mind control magic, and things even worse than magic. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0965.html) I don't think a succubus has enough to really do the deed, but it doesn't take that much bluff/diplomacy/disguise skill to be basically uncatchable. An elderly man disguising himself as a female baby is a -10 to the check, and that baby's mother would have a +10 circumstance to her Spot check to oppose it. But if the elderly man has 40 point advantage on her (or has a 30 point advantage and some kind of shapechanging ability), nothing I just said matters, and the woman believes this decrepit old man is in fact her baby girl.

A world leader is constantly subject to the highest level bluff/diplomacy checks that exist, from opposition and foreign diplomats. They generally resist them. They are probably more resistant to such techniques than anyone short of deities in the DnD setting. They are surely also far better at diplomacy and bluffing themselves than the vast majority of the inhabitants of DnD worlds, with modifiers far higher than the succubus.

As to spot vs disguise checks, remember that the OP has prescribed that we are not trying to shoehorn the real world into DnD rules. So silly results like old men disguising themselves as babies wouldn't work whatever their check, that something that one would point and laugh at. Putting that aside, the world leader's security details would be among the best at spotting disguises in the world. You could think of that as a super high spot check if you like, or simply that they are better than almost anyone at pulling up that sort of trickery.


Also, it's kinda hilarious to me that Disguise is opposed by Spot.

Well the idea that tongues can teach you languages that did not even exist when the spell was created is kinda hilarious to me. We can both point and laugh I guess.


"Greetings, mister president! Actually wait, we have to check your identity..." *whips this out from 5 ft away* (https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/pirates/images/c/c2/Spyglass.jpg)

My understanding is that they do indeed verify the world leader's identity at certain times (such as launching nukes). That is, even the person who knows the president well, will be required to verify their identity.


The original succubus suggestion is honestly scarily-good for it.
If that's the best we have, I give it a chance to win and a chance to lose.

[AvatarVecna]

Sounds reasonable. The OP has now confirmed that we are not relying on DnD rules, we are just imagining how the creatures from the DnD world would fare in the real world with its abilities intacts. In other words, real world rules and physics apply. So guns in particular operate how they do in the real world.

If early 20th century weapons would hurt the dragon once on every twentieth hit, then I think reasonable to assume that modern assault rifles, if equipped with armor penetrating bullets, would do so much more freely.

{Scrubbed}. The pathfinder modern guns are early 20th century. The 3.5 guns were not.

I'm also gonna respond to the "how to mix the worlds" {Scrubed}

If D&D doesn't take precedent for things it's rules cover, the entire discussion is literally pointless.

If real life takes precedent on everything, magic doesn't work because magic isn't real. This is a single extreme example of what that framework has to assume, but

If real life takes precedent on everything except things where D&D has something to simulate it, one of the things D&D puts a lot of effort into simulating to a huge degree is physical combat, and we need to interpret IRL weapons in the context of how they mechanically function in D&D. Because if we don't know how much damage bullets do, we have no idea how many of them it takes to kill a dragon, because dragons aren't real and don't really behave like any real thing either.

Guns are not magic death machines that destroy whatever you point them at. Even a slightly smaller dragon is going to be like trying to kill a whale whose skin is made of a foot of stone instead of a foot of blubber. Default assault rifles aren't that good at killing whales as it stands. (https://www.quora.com/How-many-M16-shots-would-it-take-to-kill-a-blue-whale) A normal-ish gun isn't gonna push through a foot of fat at all. Even a more high-powered rifle is still only going so deep, and it's making only so big a hole in the organs even if it gets through the blubber. When someone tried to euthanize a whale with a single headshot, they had to use anti-tank artillery at close range. Because that's the kind of toughness we're talking about here. Now let's point out that the kind of whale they're talking about there (a blue whale) is a baleen whale. It has 132 HP, NA +9, and no DR. All three of those things contribute to how "tough" it is to hurt/kill, and the dragon we're talking about (717 HP, NA +40, DR 20) is tougher than a whale on a scale that's actually literally impossible to imagine, because nothing in real life can even remotely compare. A person can be euthanized with a handheld pistol. A whale can be euthanized with an anti-tank cannon. That's not going to cut it with a dragon.

Killing a dragon with guns is very comparable to trying to kill a whale who, instead of blubber, has...some really tough material. What material? We're looking for hardness 20, since that's more or less exactly as hard to hurt as DR 20, but we don't really have anything we can point to. Stone is hardness 8, iron is hardness 10. We could probably use some IRL measurement of stone/iron to figure out what the equivalent measurement would be for a hardness 20 material. But ultimately, it's in the realm of fantasy materials that are indescribably tough. We use thick stone or thin metal as backdrops for shooting ranges specifically so that the bullet doesn't just go flying forever, because it's generally gonna have trouble penetrating that. Armor-piercing bullets are better at this kind of thing, but they stilll aren't magically good at penetrating armor - they're just a bit better at going a bit further in, getting far enough into the layer of stone/metal/kevlar/whatever to actually hit vitals. But they're going up against literally magically-tough scales.

The D&D gun has a ~3 in 4000 chance of hurting the dragon through its scales. That is how D&D handles things, and that is being very generous to the gun.


Understood, and very subtle

It wasn't that subtle.


Aren't they? Given that other planes do not exist, we have no idea what will cross planes. There is no IRL stuff to overrule, because there is no interaction between a place with multiple planes and nuclear radiation (or nuclear force).

There is likewise no interaction in the rules. So we are left to imagine whether radiation and forcewaves are sorts of things that might cross into other planes. Do they seem analogous to the sorts of magic that do.

I suspect we'll be unable to agree on that, so perhaps best to park the question of whether nuclear force and radiation between you and I.

"You cant prove nukes don't affect other dimensions, and that means I get to assume they do" is exactly the kind of take I would expect from you. I agree that we're not going to be able to agree, because I tend to assume that IRL things aren't magic, and you're assuming otherwise for unprovable reasons. You may as well say that punches can hurt ghosts because I can't prove they don't.


Ah, so the villain who comes here is not themselves a shadow, but a person. So they can be targeted. How do they travel?

The "person" is a high-level necromancer. "Comes here" is a relative statement that doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. They could park themselves on the far side of the moon and still send teleport shadows into our cities multiple times a day. "Can be targeted" is also something we can't actually count on. That's kinda the issue with high-level casters: their defenses can have a lot of layers that make them difficult to kill even for other mages.

Our cities are getting overrun by shadows, but we don't even know the caster exists.

If we do know he exists, we don't know where to look for him.

If we do know where to look for him, we still can't find him.

If we can find him, we can't hit him.

If we can hit him, we can't hurt him.

If we can hurt him, we can't kill him.

If we can kill him, it doesn't matter because his friends can rez him. Or maybe he's just a lich and self-"rezzes" back in safety and can try again better later.


Greater teleport does indeed solve one of the problems I think DnD visitors would face - knowing how to travel.

As noted in another post, I question Tongues applying to languages that don't exist in the DnD setting. Do new languages within the setting automatically get added to the languages Tongues can teach you. Most people don't seem agree with me about this point though.

That's because those people aren't adding arbitrary restrictions to magic spells. Neither comprehend languages nor tongues has a list of languages it works on. Our languages are not special in that regard just because we exist in a different world than D&D: if somebody casts the "speak all languages" spell, they speak all languages. It's really not that difficult a concept to understand. Your entire argument boils down to "what if magic doesn't work the way it says it does". We could say the same thing about literally anything in D&D. It's a pointless position to argue from that's just dodging the actual question. There are a hundred ways translation magic could work, and one of those is the way that it does work in D&D. If we're not assuming that it works the way it works in D&D, if we're assuming that it's possible there are extra unstated arbitrary conditions attached to the magic, then discussion is meaningless because we do not have a fundamental agreement on what the spell even does.




I think what you have posted is the D20 version of Succubus, not the DnD version.

ScrubbedI literally just copy-pasted the succubus stuff from the SRD. Here, I'll give you the link. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#succubus)


The DnD version doesn't have change self, instead it has polymorph self.

Incorrect.


I don't know exactly how change self works

Correct, you don't.


but polymorph lets you change to a human shape and select your features, but there's nothing inherent in the spell that allows you to look like a particular person.

It's a good thing the Succubus is using the Change Shape special ability, as noted in its monster description. Time for another SRD link! (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#changeShape)


A creature with this special quality has the ability to assume the appearance of a specific creature or type of creature (usually a humanoid), but retains most of its own physical qualities.

(Just making sure to quote the relevant part, for ease of reference.)


If does add +10 to disguise checks though (which is incorporated into the stats you posted).

Once again, incorrect. Although this time, this isn't really your fault, because stat blocks aren't great at showing off what parts of bonuses are coming from what source.




Abilities: Str 13, Dex 13, Con 13, Int 16, Wis 14, Cha 26

Skills: Bluff +19, Concentration +10, Diplomacy +12, Disguise +17* (+19 acting), Escape Artist +10, Hide +10, Intimidate +19, Knowledge (any one) +12, Listen +19, Move Silently +10, Search +12, Spot +19, Survival +2 (+4 following tracks), Use Rope +1 (+3 with bindings)

Feats: Dodge, Mobility, Persuasive

...

Skills
Succubi have a +8 racial bonus on Listen and Spot checks.

*While using her change shape ability, a succubus gains a +10 circumstance bonus on Disguise checks.

Succubus has 6 outsider HD, and thus should have 99 skill points assigned.



Skill
Total
Attribute
Feat
Race
Remainder


Bluff
+19
+8
+2

9


Concentration
+10
+1


9


Diplomacy
+12
+8


4


Disguise
+17
+8


9


Escape Artist
+10
+1


9


Hide
+10
+1


9


Intimidate
+19
+8
+2

9


Knowledge
+12
+3


9


Listen
+19
+2

+8
9


Move Silently
+10
+1


9


Search
+12
+3


9


Spot
+19
+2

+8
9


Survival
+2
+2


0


Use Rope
+1
+1


0



That's 11 skills at max ranks, which would be all the skill points, and then four points in Diplomacy that aren't skill ranks. 2 of those is a synergy bonus from Bluff, but I have no idea where the other two are coming from. It's possible the people writing the statblock initially had Knowledge (Nobility & Royalty) or Sense Motive, but it got switched out at some point and the synergy bonus wasn't removed. It's also possible that they didn't check and assumed the Persuasive feat gave a +2 to Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate instead of the factual Bluff/Intimidate (possibly just because it's weird that Persuasive doesn't make you better at persuading people).

The disguise bonus in their skill line is fully explainable by them having full ranks in the skill and an enormous Charisma. The +10 circumstance bonus from Change Shape is not already accounted for, so their Disguise bonus while using it is +27, or +29 when acting.


Would that be sufficient to fool the sorts of security that world leaders (of the type who are able to declare war), I'm not sure. There's the spot check of the security detail (whose spot checks for such things would be among the best in the world), then there's the possibility of various other technological measures (such as facial recognition tech). I know that verification of identity is required in some circumstances, but what circumstances and what sort of verification I don't know, and is probably secret.

I'm not gonna say that secret service and the like isn't competent or paranoid, but I think you're making them out to be more than they are. Secret service are not 20 HD superhumans, they're equivalent to lvl 6 at absolute best and are honestly probably closer to lvl 3 in terms of their capabilities. That's just true of most important people: the skill capabilities of a lvl 6 specialist are pretty well-designed (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2) for being on-par with "best in history" at the skill in question. The succubus is that level of skill. The succubus is super-spy master-of-disguise mind-reading infiltrator, and frankly secret service is looking for people dressed funny. They've probably got the equivalent of a +10 at best for general checks; the circumstance bonus for familiarity matters probably more than their own personal skills. And that's if it's somebody who is intimately familiar with the president. If it's somebody in the chain of command who can recognize the president on sight, but doesn't really know them personally, and isn't exactly as perceptive as secret service, they're basically screwed.

Of course, technology might be able to close this gap, but that's generally going to be things like ID card scanners, maybe ocular scanners. But the thing is, Change Shape is magic. The succubus' eye just looks like the president's eye. The whole point of the magic is that it makes their shape match that of the president. That technology is absolutely fantastic at catching people who are using actual disguises to pretend to be somebody else, but it's not really designed with shapechangers in mind. Of course, all of that is only relevant if paranoia is at maximum: secret service probably isn't performing a 20-minute thorough inspection of the president every time he emerges from the bathroom to make sure it's actually him that came out of the stall. They made sure nobody was in there first, they made sure nobody besides the president came in, they made sure nobody was in there after the president came out...therefore, that person who came out must be the president. It's a decent way of making sure the person who left your line of sight and the person who entered your line of sight are the same person (just know who all is in an area, and lock it down to make sure you keep track of everybody going in/coming out), but it doesn't work so great against, say, teleportation.

Of course, the big thing that stops most people from being able to launch nukes isn't super-secret facial recognition software, it's passwords. You can hack a computer, but you can't hack somebody's brain: as long as the president and the people around him have good information security and keep good strong passwords for things like this, nobody should be able to give the codes that tell the airmen or whoever to start launching the nukes. The airman is only gonna start launching nukes if they get the complicated password that only the president should have. So we're safe as long as the saboteur can't read minds.

Oops. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/detectThoughts.htm)



I don;t see how charm monster would help with making someone launch nukes. Would you launch nukes if your friend asked you to do so? Suggestion is more likely, if it works.

First off, I can't even get you to agree that Tongues works the literal way it says it works. I'm not gonna really bother arguing the point on more open-ended magic.

Second off, I kinda agree? Charm Monster is more for making sure nobody is overly hostile towards you but otherwise is behaving normally; Suggestion is needed for getting them to behave abnormally.


I don't know anyway to translate the chance of saving into the real world, except to simply mimic the rules. A national leader is likely to be amongst the highest level people in he land. They would probably be either an expert, and aristocrat or some other class that doesn't exist in the DnD setting (all of whom would have strong will saves). A 16 level aristocrat has +10 will save, plus the leader's wisdom (which you'd also expect to be high).

Per the linked Alexandrian article, for various reasons IRL people are going to tend to not be better than level 6. This is in regards to toughness and skill capabilities. This is the whole point of E6, if you've heard of that: it lets adventurers be legendary heroes, while still keeping things very roughly realistic. Lvl 16 aristocrat is a bad assumption for the willpower of the people involved, but it's also kinda irrelevant. Being at-will and high DC against low-level enemies (be they experienced politicians or button-pressers somewhere in the military chain of command) means that there's going to be a pretty good chance of it working, and it only needs to work once on a given person. If there's another layer that needs to be suggested? Just go get them too. They're not going to be any more ready for a succubus than the president was.


Beyond all that, it would take our succubus some time to work out the correct people are who have nukes, where they are, how to approach them. Even you, who have been living in this world for some years seem to think a single person can launch nukes, but I don't think that's so. There's a lot for the succubus to learn before it would be able to attempt the above. Some of that would probably be secret.

In the US? You're probably correct, getting nukes launched is going to be a very difficult process with a number of checks to make sure the person who wants them launched has the authority to do so. But because of Mutually-Assured Destruction, all it takes is any one person who has nukes launching them. The whole system is only as strong as the weakest link. And because MAD is a thing, every government in the world that's nuke-capable has to be ready to launch at a moment's notice in case somebody else launches - because the system only works if the time between "you find out Russia is nuking you" and "the nuke has arrived" is enough time for you to launch your own nukes at Russia. All it takes is finding the country with the lamest nuclear security, and the whole world tumbles into an apocalypse. And there's a lot of countries with nukes.

It's difficult to express how incredulous I am at how resistant you are to this. The teleporting, shapeshifting, mind-reading, mind-controlling, super-linguist designed by Satan to be the ultimate in infiltration and corruption can, in fact, get somebody to launch nukes and kickstart the apocalypse.


Ghostbusters is as much a documentary to incorporeality as any other source. The ethereal plane doesn't exist, so who knows how long it would take us to figure out a way past it if it suddenly came into existence with the arrival of a DnD villain.

"You can't prove we couldn't figure it out." That's not how proof works. I also can't prove our world isn't a dead magic zone being kept that way by a high-epic wizard. That doesn't make it a good assumption for the thought experiment.


If China launches a nuke at one of its own cities, the world would not fire back. They wouldn't even know in real time I don't think, because the missile wouldn't follow a ballistic trajectory. Withou going into politics, there are countries in the world that launch the missiles that might carry nuclear warheads from time to time as tests.

Yes, but tests are generally known about beforehand (maybe not to the public, but certainly to the government). When somebody tests a nuclear warhead out, the world governments are generally aware of it beforehand - they know it's gonna happen, they don't need to immediately react. But if an unexpected launch happens? They're going to know very quickly - maybe not all of them, but somebody's gonna have the intelligence services in place to know it's happening, and radar and the like will find out very quickly as well. There's not going to be time for them to wait and see where it looks like the missile is launching, somebody just launched a nuke we weren't expecting them to launch. Once again, it only takes one person with twitchy fingers and limited nuclear security to freak out.


A world leader is constantly subject to the highest level bluff/diplomacy checks that exist, from opposition and foreign diplomats. They generally resist them. They are probably more resistant to such techniques than anyone short of deities in the DnD setting. They are surely also far better at diplomacy and bluffing themselves than the vast majority of the inhabitants of DnD worlds, with modifiers far higher than the succubus.

Incorrect - at least as far as the intensity of those bonuses. You're making very high-level assumptions about real-world politicians. Realworld politicians are not superhumanly good at convincing people. They're just pretty good at it. Succubus skill level is equivalent to IRL "best in history". And succubus aren't even particularly good by D&D standards.


As to spot vs disguise checks, remember that the OP has prescribed that we are not trying to shoehorn the real world into DnD rules. So silly results like old men disguising themselves as babies wouldn't work whatever their check, that something that one would point and laugh at. Putting that aside, the world leader's security details would be among the best at spotting disguises in the world. You could think of that as a super high spot check if you like, or simply that they are better than almost anyone at pulling up that sort of trickery.

I'm thinking of it as good by IRL definitions but they're still not magic. They can't see like superman, and that's the kind of vision you need to penetrate disguises this good. It's also kind of missing the point: in D&D land, skills can be so good that they can accomplish absurd things. A super-high Spot check can make out the details of something from a thousand feet off as easily as if you were holding it. A super-high Jump check can leap tall buildings in a single bound. A super-high Balance check lets you walk on a cloud. A super-high Sleight Of Hand check lets somebody steal your underwear without touching your pants. A super-high Bluff or Diplomacy check is so powerful it counts as mind control and can convince you of absurd things with a simple statement. The idea of an old man disguising himself as a baby is laughable in real life because nobody in real life has the equivalent of a +40 disguise check.


Well the idea that tongues can teach you languages that did not even exist when the spell was created is kinda hilarious to me. We can both point and laugh I guess.

It's literally already been pointed out to you that Earth is semi-canon in D&D. Magic stretches across all worlds. Earth is not a spot of complete un-knowledge in the Weave. Tongues does not say "this only works on [list of languages], anything not on that list doesn't work". You're literally insisting that a demon designed for corrupting mortals can't speak their language just because English isn't in the player's handbook.


If that's the best we have, I give it a chance to win and a chance to lose.

Nothing is more emblematic of this argument than you looking at a 6 HD creature with a few SLAs and saying "that's the best we have", all while assuming that the reason it only has a chance instead of a guarantee is because all IRL people are superhumanly competent and paranoid all the time.

For a painfully obvious example of something better, we could go with the Lilitu, an evolved form of succubus.

Link because I can't count on you to search up anything for yourself (https://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/block/Lilitu)

It's basically just a succubus with another +10 to most skills, although it's also got much better Diplomacy and Sense Motive, and 5th lvl cleric spells. It's not even all that cool, it's just slightly cooler than a succubus. and still, it's skills are starting to have a chance at some of those super-high capabilities.

A mid-level expert with the right items could waltz into wherever they want and nobody would think to stop them. A mid-high-level factotum could just become president of a nuclear-capable country as soon as they showed up, political process be damned. A high-level wizard could teleport around the world, untouchably and undetectably, irresistibly mind controlling whoever he wants into doing whatever he wants.

{Scrubbed}. Magic and skills work the way they say they work. Real-world politicians aren't as skilled as gods or as tough as tanks. We are not anywhere near as far from the possibility of nuclear annihilation as you think we are.

[liquidformat]

I think those abilities would be less useful than you give them credit for. For example, the changling might be able to change their physical form, but I think it would take a long time for them to be able to imitate real human's mannerisms and style of dress. They wouldn't know the languages, so they wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone - and although I understand they can learn languages quickly there are thousands of languages on Earth.

I don't know how you think that a changling can simply change others' minds - I see nothing inherent in their race that allows them to do that. Do you have an actual villian in mind. Or are you intending to make a build and optimise in particularly for infiltrating earth,

Anyway dominate person, charm person, suggestion all require a common language.

In the post you quoted it clearly said a changeling enchanter, so the changeling would be getting their magical powers from their enchanter wizard levels...

Anyways, no time frame was given, I don't see any reason that if a changeling wizard came to earth they would have to immediately start trying to take over or go full murderhobo. They could easily take time to learn the language and familiarize themselves with the powers, styles of dress, and mannerisms. That seems pretty standard for someone who is going stealth infiltrator to over take a planet. Based on what changelings are I don't think it would take them that long to learn earth languages (they really only need a few languages to enact world domination 2-3 not 1k...) or to pickup earth human dress and mannerisms. Seriously it would probably only take a few days for a changeling to pickup human dress and mannerisms, there isn't exactly anything very complicated about either.


The heads of state do not congregate at the UN, ambassadors do, who have little power themselves. Anyway, UN headquarters would have heavy security, requiring photo ID, passcodes etc. How would the changling even know he needed them. How would it know where the UN building is, when they are meeting, or even what the UN is. It doesn't know how to use the internet.
I mean you are half right so go you, it would be great if you fully read what you are commenting on and quoting, like in the last comment the answer is in what you quoted. I specified 'a UN meeting where all the heads of state of the world are present'; sure that doesn't happen every day but it does happen every what 2-4 years?


I don't think your idea around religion would work either. But I suggest we cannot discuss that idea without breaking the forum rules.

How would the changling even travel. They don't know what aeroplanes are, they don't have a bank account (or understand what a bank account is), they have no passport and don't even know what one is know to steal one.

The more i think about it, the more i think the changling would be less capable of destroying the world than a normal human from earth.
Yes talking specifically about religion is an issue but its fine as long as skirt around the specifying any actual religion and the specifics really aren't important.

All of this is really dependent on how things occur. If we have a situation where one BBEG whether villain or monster comes to earth somehow and thinks to themselves 'hey I can totally become king of this backwater planet.' Taking the time to learn about and understand earth (languages, people, religion, and so forth) would be quite normal and wouldn't be that hard to do or take that much extra time. Maybe a year or two to get all their ducks in a row. After that it is just a matter of implementation where they start their infiltration plan or religious cult or whatever.

Blending into society honestly wouldn't be that hard, I mean you get a general idea of human fashion and mannerisms by looking at humans in any city for a day meanwhile everyone thinks you are just cosplaying or some crazy homeless person (I have seen plenty who don't seem to have a good grasp on human clothes). After that doing a simple robbery, or even going to a homeless shelter can get you normal human clothes and supplies to blend in while you learn about earth society.

On the other hand, if instead we have a situation where say a rift breaks open and suddenly we have d&d pouring into earth, then sure the time crunch makes it harder to go infiltrator than the above. And yet the chaos caused by other d&d entities invading would be good cover for said infiltrator or infiltrators to be even less noticed.

I think you gloss over a bit how hard it would be for earth to understand and integrate magic. Sure when we realize invisibility is a thing we can put up countermeasures like using flour and what not very quickly but to actually fully understand all the possible magics out there especially the less obvious ones like charms and compulsions would take quite a while and it might take decades to create true defenses against them. Once a caster knows our languages they could easily use say detect thoughts to figure out passwords and gleam important information from people; charm, suggestion, glibness, and other such enchantments can easily be leveraged to get information out of people and make them do stuff. Even if we know the invaders have such powers we would struggle to do anything about it.


I think what you have posted is the D20 version of Succubus, not the DnD version. The DnD version doesn't have change self, instead it has polymorph self. I don't know exactly how change self works, but polymorph lets you change to a human shape and select your features, but there's nothing inherent in the spell that allows you to look like a particular person. If does add +10 to disguise checks though (which is incorporated into the stats you posted). Would that be sufficient to fool the sorts of security that world leaders (of the type who are able to declare war), I'm not sure. There's the spot check of the security detail (whose spot checks for such things would be among the best in the world), then there's the possibility of various other technological measures (such as facial recognition tech). I know that verification of identity is required in some circumstances, but what circumstances and what sort of verification I don't know, and is probably secret.

You must be looking at the 3.0 version of succubus? 3.5 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#succubus) has change shape. The real key to this is what we know at any one time, the more we know about magic and what types are out their the more safeguards and roadblocks would be put in place to prevent a succubus, changeling or so forth from impersonating anyone. But if we have no clue about magic, or this type of magic then it wouldn't be that hard, seriously there was some random guy pretending to be European royalty and getting into all sorts of places...


Minor nitpick: out of 400 attacks on such a dragon, 19 will hit and 1 will crit. The crit is the only one that has a chance of bypassing DR without us arbitrarily declaring guns to be magic. 4d8 vs DR 20 will average dealing 4144 damage across 4096 crits. As the dragon in question has 717 hp, it should take ~708 crits to kill it, which means ~283477 bullets put into it via normal attack rolls. With a platoon of 100 soldiers making 30 attacks per round (which isn't how D&D simulates automatic weapons, but whatever), it's still going to take 94 rounds to kill a dragon. Assuming the dragon isn't picking soldiers off with natural weapons or breath weapons while this occurs. Which it would be.

If we are going to talk about 'real world' weapons in any meaningful way then I think it is important to include some sort of Called Shot Rules (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/called-shots/) into play since typically we wouldn't simply be trying to shoot blindly at an enemy. Part of the power of modern guns is their accuracy after all.


Ehhhh idk about that. The reason shadows had a chance is because we just lack the weaponry capable of actually dealing with them, and they can self-replicate faster than most similar undead. Wights are basically just a classic zombie apocalypse. Except most zombie apocalypse fictions start at "the horde has somehow overcome 90% of the world before we could do anything" as opposed to "zombie outbreak at one small lab in texas was quickly dealt with after the zombies were shot with enough ammunition to bury them in it". Wights would have an edge over normal zombies in that they're smart enough to talk and use technology, but they still look and smell like a corpse.
Agreed, just think how many gun toting Americans would go crazy with excitement to get a chance to participate in a zombie apocalypse. The only way a ghoul or wight would really have a chance is if they were specifically trying to stay under the radar until they hit a critical mass of wights/ghouls but even then I don't think it would have that much of a chance.

[The Glyphstone]

Agreed, just think how many gun toting Americans would go crazy with excitement to get a chance to participate in a zombie apocalypse. The only way a ghoul or wight would really have a chance is if they were specifically trying to stay under the radar until they hit a critical mass of wights/ghouls but even then I don't think it would have that much of a chance.

There's a whole lot of places that aren't America in the world, though, with similar or greater population densities and far fewer firearms per capita.

[Pezzo]

We need to know the rules, I assume the OP is the DM, so I got some questions for him. Does Knowledge (religion) let you know about any of Earth's religions? Can a shapeshifter mate with anything on earth? As said above about the tongues spell, does it work (I think this one should, because it should work on any homebrewed language, unless people of the earth aren't considered intelligent creatures)? Can you summon other creatures? Is Earth connected to the ethereal plane? Can you create new spells, like an ebola cloud for example? With the epic deflection feats can you deflect bullets and nuclear missiles? Is dragon magazine allowed?

[masamune1]

We need to know the rules, I assume the OP is the DM, so I got some questions for him. Does Knowledge (religion) let you know about any of Earth's religions? Can a shapeshifter mate with anything on earth? As said above about the tongues spell, does it work (I think this one should, because it should work on any homebrewed language, unless people of the earth aren't considered intelligent creatures)? Can you summon other creatures? Is Earth connected to the ethereal plane? Can you create new spells, like an ebola cloud for example? With the epic deflection feats can you deflect bullets and nuclear missiles? Is dragon magazine allowed?

They don't know anything about Earth but know they are in another world. They have to figure Earth out on their own.

A shapeshifter can mate with anything on Earth if they can do that in DnD (I am no expert on the sexual biology of every DnD creature).

Tongues spell works.

They can summon other creatures if they have that ability or spell yes.

Earth is connected to the ethereal plane yes.

No new spells unless they could do that already.

Epic deflection deflects bullets from primitive firearms but not modern weapons; it does nothing to a nuke.

No Dragon Magazine. This version of Earth does not have Dungeons and Dragons.

[Pezzo]

Yes, in DnD you can mate with anything, that's how half-dragon cows come to be :D
If a creature of an "always evil" race that is known to produce "always evil" half-templates breeds on earth, it could create an army of evil half-animals half-whatever. In the real world mice are impossible to exterminate, and breed at an insect-like speed, making for excellent candidates. Also vampires are too strong for us, with the ability to create spawns.
Summoners could also do something similar by summoning a shapeshifting creature and use it to breed on earth.
Any spellcaster could get to a senile president of a powerful nation and use its army to invade the rest of the world, and trap people he doesn't like inside Leomund's secret chests to be lost forever.

On earth, the strongest villains we could beat is a fighter, and that would be challenging. Think Artemis Entreri, that arrives on earth inside a construction yard while some workers are laying concrete for the foundations of a building, and he lands on the concrete, and by accident a nuke is falling from the sky. Yes, we could beat him.

[Liquor Box]

I'm also gonna respond to the "how to mix the worlds", {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}:

If D&D doesn't take precedent for things it's rules cover, the entire discussion is literally pointless.

If real life takes precedent on everything, magic doesn't work because magic isn't real. This is a single extreme example of what that framework has to assume, but

If real life takes precedent on everything except things where D&D has something to simulate it, one of the things D&D puts a lot of effort into simulating to a huge degree is physical combat, and we need to interpret IRL weapons in the context of how they mechanically function in D&D. Because if we don't know how much damage bullets do, we have no idea how many of them it takes to kill a dragon, because dragons aren't real and don't really behave like any real thing either.

By every time, I think I have talked about real life vs DnD once before. Maybe twice.

And you do make that assertion that time, and like now, then you were wrong.

Of course you can construct DnD creatures in accordance with the way things work in real life. Just about every hih fantasy movie or TV series does construct DnD type creatures and magics and make them work in a real world type setting. Just because that's not what suits you best does not mean it was illegitimate.

Of course, using real world lore, magic would not work. Therefore, one simply modifies real world lore to allow for magic, to allow for dragons, to allow for incorporeals. Some lack of clarity about how the two interact remains, but I think that happens in either case. I appreciate you find the DnD rules a useful way of simulating how combat and other exchanges take place, but they were not designed with real world systems (like firearms, or fighter jet, or indeed nuclear weapons) in mind so simulate them poorly or not at all.

Either way of doing it, or something in between is valid. The fact that you really really prefer one, and find that it leads the sorts of answers that you prefer does not invalidate the other. In this case the OP has clarified how he is thinking of the question. That doesn't bind you to discuss it in that context, but if you choose not to do so you are not addressing his question.


Guns are not magic death machines that destroy whatever you point them at. Even a slightly smaller dragon is going to be like trying to kill a whale whose skin is made of a foot of stone instead of a foot of blubber. Default assault rifles aren't that good at killing whales as it stands. A normal-ish gun isn't gonna push through a foot of fat at all. Even a more high-powered rifle is still only going so deep, and it's making only so big a hole in the organs even if it gets through the blubber. When someone tried to euthanize a whale with a single headshot, they had to use anti-tank artillery at close range. Because that's the kind of toughness we're talking about here. Now let's point out that the kind of whale they're talking about there (a blue whale) is a baleen whale. It has 132 HP, NA +9, and no DR. All three of those things contribute to how "tough" it is to hurt/kill, and the dragon we're talking about (717 HP, NA +40, DR 20) is tougher than a whale on a scale that's actually literally impossible to imagine, because nothing in real life can even remotely compare. A person can be euthanized with a handheld pistol. A whale can be euthanized with an anti-tank cannon. That's not going to cut it with a dragon.

Killing a dragon with guns is very comparable to trying to kill a whale who, instead of blubber, has...some really tough material. What material? We're looking for hardness 20, since that's more or less exactly as hard to hurt as DR 20, but we don't really have anything we can point to. Stone is hardness 8, iron is hardness 10. We could probably use some IRL measurement of stone/iron to figure out what the equivalent measurement would be for a hardness 20 material. But ultimately, it's in the realm of fantasy materials that are indescribably tough. We use thick stone or thin metal as backdrops for shooting ranges specifically so that the bullet doesn't just go flying forever, because it's generally gonna have trouble penetrating that. Armor-piercing bullets are better at this kind of thing, but they stilll aren't magically good at penetrating armor - they're just a bit better at going a bit further in, getting far enough into the layer of stone/metal/kevlar/whatever to actually hit vitals. But they're going up against literally magically-tough scales.

The D&D gun has a ~3 in 4000 chance of hurting the dragon through its scales. That is how D&D handles things, and that is being very generous to the gun.


Well, death machines is exactly what guns are, that's the thing they are designed to do, so your hyperbole doesn't land.

But I agree with your underlying point - guns can't easily kill all real world creatures, let alone fantastic creatures.

Your post otherwise is an exercise in proving my above point. You can use analogies (you analogising a dragon to a whale) to think about how real world weapons would interact with DnD creatures.

Having said that, I think your conclusion is faulty.

You search for a real life thing that is more resistant to weapon damage than stone or iron, and cannot think of anything. There are lots of such things - steel is a very common example of something that is much tougher than iron. Tank armour effectiveness is often given in terms of the equivalent thickness steel. We know that much thinner tank armour is the equivilent of several times thicker steel.. I'll look up the figures later but they suggest that real life damage resistance f some materials and composites would be well into the 30s when compared to DnD hardness.

Back to the question of bullets, one substance that is significantly more resistant to bullet damage than iron (or even steel) is kevlar. That is exactly the sort of armour that armour piercing bullets are designed to penetrate. The whole reason that kevlar was developed was because older iron and steel armour was so ineffective against even old fashioned bullets (lead balls shot by muskets). That DnD doesn't simulate demonstrates the failing of using DnD rules in a comparison like this.

You are also mistaken about the effectiveness of guns against whales:

Allen Ingling has shown that rifles of . 460 caliber and larger are more than capable of firing shots that will sufficiently penetrate and damage the central nervous system to immediately kill a whale (Appendix A).
https://nammco.no/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/doc-14-makah-grey-whale-hunt.pdf

Another reference more specific to blue whales, although a less authorotative source
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/38qon4/could_you_kill_a_blue_whale_with_one_bullet/

To avoid being strawmanned, I want to be clear that I have never suggested that a dragon could be one shotted by an ordinary gun. It may well take hundreds of bullets to down a dragon (which is more than it would take for a whale). But I think your (or DnD's) estimate that only one in 4000 would cause any damage at all is well wide of the mark.


It wasn't that subtle.

Care to explain it then?


"You cant prove nukes don't affect other dimensions, and that means I get to assume they do" is exactly the kind of take I would expect from you. I agree that we're not going to be able to agree, because I tend to assume that IRL things aren't magic, and you're assuming otherwise for unprovable reasons. You may as well say that punches can hurt ghosts because I can't prove they don't.

"You can't prove nukes do effect other dimensions, and that means I get to assume they cannot" is effectively the same take in reverse. So apparently the sort of 'take' you would expect from me, is the same take you default to yourself.

I never said it was magic. It is unlike magic from DnD, and also unlike any physcial or energy effect from DnD. It is something that is of a different type from anything in DnD, so we don't know how it would interact with concepts that are unique to DnD.

That's a very weak analogy. Punches do exist in DnD, so if ghosts (as imagined by DnD) aren't effected by punches, then reasonable to assume they are here either.


The "person" is a high-level necromancer. "Comes here" is a relative statement that doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. They could park themselves on the far side of the moon and still send teleport shadows into our cities multiple times a day. "Can be targeted" is also something we can't actually count on. That's kinda the issue with high-level casters: their defenses can have a lot of layers that make them difficult to kill even for other mages.

I appreciate you being a little more specific about the class etc of the villain you are suggesting might invade. The question was about the strongest villian the world could beat. Do you think the world could beat anything short of a high level necromancer?

Because if you are only raising it to make the point that there are some creatures in DnD that the world can't prevail against, I dont think anyone is arguing against it. I thought you were originally saying that a creature as weak as a shadow could win (they are the villain, not the tool) so I pointed out that you were wrong there. But you are right that, if you choose to interpret the scenario to give DnD monsters an instant "I win" button, or to make them completely invulnerable, then of course some would win. It's as pointless as discussing a scenario where magic doesn't exist.


Our cities are getting overrun by shadows, but we don't even know the caster exists.

If we do know he exists, we don't know where to look for him.

If we do know where to look for him, we still can't find him.

If we can find him, we can't hit him.

If we can hit him, we can't hurt him.

If we can hurt him, we can't kill him.

These points are your opinion, and we;d have to discuss each to establish a common understanding on the,. On your first point, why wouldn't we know he exists when he gets here in a scenario where he is here and has come to defeat us? That would seem an unevenhanded way to set up the scenario.

If you do want to go through it, can I ask that you first outline the character that you are discussing (what spells are on his list)? But it may be that, if we do things in accordance with strict DnD rules it becomes silly in the same was as making magic not exist is silly.


If we can kill him, it doesn't matter because his friends can rez him. Or maybe he's just a lich and self-"rezzes" back in safety and can try again better later.

What friends? Aren't we talking about a solo villain?


That's because those people aren't adding arbitrary restrictions to magic spells. Neither comprehend languages nor tongues has a list of languages it works on. Our languages are not special in that regard just because we exist in a different world than D&D: if somebody casts the "speak all languages" spell, they speak all languages. It's really not that difficult a concept to understand. Your entire argument boils down to "what if magic doesn't work the way it says it does". We could say the same thing about literally anything in D&D. It's a pointless position to argue from that's just dodging the actual question. There are a hundred ways translation magic could work, and one of those is the way that it does work in D&D. If we're not assuming that it works the way it works in D&D, if we're assuming that it's possible there are extra unstated arbitrary conditions attached to the magic, then discussion is meaningless because we do not have a fundamental agreement on what the spell even does.

The OP has now clarified that Tongues does work to learn real world languages. So this is covered, it was only a minor point by me anyway.

I did write a response before I saw that, which is here:

Not at all. If you can learn any language, then I think it is implicit that it means any language that actually exists. In a DnD scenario our languages do not exist. If a DnD villain was suddenly brought to life, I'm not sure that the spell suddenly incorporates the new languages that had not existed previously.

It may be that you are thinking of the real world and the DnD setting co-existing (perhaps on different planes) and the villain moving from one to the other. I am thinking that the DnD world does not exist, and from the perspective of the DnD setting, the real world does not exist. I am thinking of the scenario as imagining that we somehow created a previously non-existent DnD villian in the real world in such a way they can still use their magic and abilities.

You are wrong that you could say the same thing about any spelll - that's as bad as your punch analogy above.

I'm happy to proceed on the basis that Tongues and similar spells do work though. As mentioned previously, that was only a minor part of by objection.


{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}I literally just copy-pasted the succubus stuff from the SRD. Here, I'll give you the link. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#succubus)

Yes, the link leads to D20 (which is SRD), as I said. Slightly different from their DnD description.

I think it's funny too, but perhaps for a different reason to you.


Incorrect.

I'm afraid they "I say it so it must be true" tactic doesn't really hold

However, I'm not sure that the polymorph self (but only to a humanoid) and the change self from SRD are that different, so perhaps not too important to chase down the point.


Correct, you don't.


See, we've found some common ground. A win. :smallsmile:


It's a good thing the Succubus is using the Change Shape special ability, as noted in its monster description. Time for another SRD link! (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#changeShape)
(Just making sure to quote the relevant part, for ease of reference.)


Yeah, I was wrong a few lines up. That is a little different from how it works in DnD 3.5. But it does have the same outcome for our purposes - +10 to disguise. So it probably matters little whether we talk about DnD of the SRD open game license.


Once again, incorrect. Although this time, this isn't really your fault, because stat blocks aren't great at showing off what parts of bonuses are coming from what source.



Succubus has 6 outsider HD, and thus should have 99 skill points assigned.



Skill
Total
Attribute
Feat
Race
Remainder


Bluff
+19
+8
+2

9


Concentration
+10
+1


9


Diplomacy
+12
+8


4


Disguise
+17
+8


9


Escape Artist
+10
+1


9


Hide
+10
+1


9


Intimidate
+19
+8
+2

9


Knowledge
+12
+3


9


Listen
+19
+2

+8
9


Move Silently
+10
+1


9


Search
+12
+3


9


Spot
+19
+2

+8
9


Survival
+2
+2


0


Use Rope
+1
+1


0



That's 11 skills at max ranks, which would be all the skill points, and then four points in Diplomacy that aren't skill ranks. 2 of those is a synergy bonus from Bluff, but I have no idea where the other two are coming from. It's possible the people writing the statblock initially had Knowledge (Nobility & Royalty) or Sense Motive, but it got switched out at some point and the synergy bonus wasn't removed. It's also possible that they didn't check and assumed the Persuasive feat gave a +2 to Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate instead of the factual Bluff/Intimidate (possibly just because it's weird that Persuasive doesn't make you better at persuading people).

The disguise bonus in their skill line is fully explainable by them having full ranks in the skill and an enormous Charisma. The +10 circumstance bonus from Change Shape is not already accounted for, so their Disguise bonus while using it is +27, or +29 when acting.

You are right this time. Point conceded. Succubi are better at disguise than I thought.


I'm not gonna say that secret service and the like isn't competent or paranoid, but I think you're making them out to be more than they are. Secret service are not 20 HD superhumans, they're equivalent to lvl 6 at absolute best and are honestly probably closer to lvl 3 in terms of their capabilities. That's just true of most important people: the skill capabilities of a lvl 6 specialist are pretty well-designed (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2) for being on-par with "best in history" at the skill in question. The succubus is that level of skill. The succubus is super-spy master-of-disguise mind-reading infiltrator, and frankly secret service is looking for people dressed funny. They've probably got the equivalent of a +10 at best for general checks; the circumstance bonus for familiarity matters probably more than their own personal skills. And that's if it's somebody who is intimately familiar with the president. If it's somebody in the chain of command who can recognize the president on sight, but doesn't really know them personally, and isn't exactly as perceptive as secret service, they're basically screwed.

The article you've linked are you referencing it as an authority? Or do you reference because it explains points you would otheriwse have made yourself. Because I don't agree with the article on the point of level.

It starts its defence of levels by trying to debunk a criticism - that Einstein must have been high level to be as good as physics as he was, but that would suggest high hit points. It answers this by saying that Einsteins level wouldn't have been that high. It fails in that regard - Einstein is still higher level than most so would still tend to have more hit points than most (as would other elite intellectuals).

It also distorts the players hand book description of the level of skill required. It suggests that Einstein might only have had knowledge (physics) 15 because DC25 checks are required for questions that are "among the hardest physics questions known to man.". Wheras the players hand book describes DC 20 to 30 as only being "really tough". I'd expect Einstein to routinily know tough physics questions. Indeed he was able to answer several questions that no physicist that had come before him had been able to.

It then goes on to discuss blacksmiths, but boosts their skill points by relying on the skill focus feat and intelligence bonus. I suspect most real world blacksmiths did not do the real world of burning a feat, or routinely have intelligence bonuses.

Overall I think a big part of the problem is that DnD does not model real world people very well (again why we are not using a rule based analysis here). If we were forced to do so, i'd agree that ordinary people are not high level. Even elite people like world leader sucurity would not be very high level (above level 10), but I think they'd be higher level than your estimate.

Moving back to a real world analysis - they would be the very best in the world at what they do.


Of course, technology might be able to close this gap, but that's generally going to be things like ID card scanners, maybe ocular scanners. But the thing is, Change Shape is magic. The succubus' eye just looks like the president's eye. The whole point of the magic is that it makes their shape match that of the president. That technology is absolutely fantastic at catching people who are using actual disguises to pretend to be somebody else, but it's not really designed with shapechangers in mind. Of course, all of that is only relevant if paranoia is at maximum: secret service probably isn't performing a 20-minute thorough inspection of the president every time he emerges from the bathroom to make sure it's actually him that came out of the stall. They made sure nobody was in there first, they made sure nobody besides the president came in, they made sure nobody was in there after the president came out...therefore, that person who came out must be the president. It's a decent way of making sure the person who left your line of sight and the person who entered your line of sight are the same person (just know who all is in an area, and lock it down to make sure you keep track of everybody going in/coming out), but it doesn't work so great against, say, teleportation.

The open source document you linked says "The creature is effectively camouflaged as a creature of its new form". I don't read that as saying the succubus is identical to its new form. It equates the ability with a +10 disguise check, more than half of which will be overcome by the +6 bonus security get for often associating with the world leader they protect - again not consistent with being identical.

So get frustrated with me if you like, but I don't accept that on the basis of the spells description that an ocular scanner (or a fingerprint detector of the type all phones have) would be fooled. The succubus does not become the person, they are only camoflaged as them. Not a case of me trying to twist magic so it doesn't work as described, just me not assuming that magic naturally overcomes everything.

We are in the realm of guessing here, but common sense dictates that wouldn't fully check the world leader every time he comes out of the bathroom. Common sense dictates they would check him every time he tries to launch a nuclear strike (or command someone to do so) though.


Of course, the big thing that stops most people from being able to launch nukes isn't super-secret facial recognition software, it's passwords. You can hack a computer, but you can't hack somebody's brain: as long as the president and the people around him have good information security and keep good strong passwords for things like this, nobody should be able to give the codes that tell the airmen or whoever to start launching the nukes. The airman is only gonna start launching nukes if they get the complicated password that only the president should have. So we're safe as long as the saboteur can't read minds.

Oops. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/detectThoughts.htm)

Oops is right unless you intended to make my point. the description says it only detects surface thoughts, not passcodes and the like. It also makes the point that if the world leader's intelligence is over 26 (which is not out of the question for a world leader) the Succubus might be stunned.


First off, I can't even get you to agree that Tongues works the literal way it says it works. I'm not gonna really bother arguing the point on more open-ended magic.

Second off, I kinda agree? Charm Monster is more for making sure nobody is overly hostile towards you but otherwise is behaving normally; Suggestion is needed for getting them to behave abnormally.
Touche. I love the way you manage to agree with me here, but still phrase it in such a way that you think I'm being totally unreasonable in coming to the point you disagree with. :smallbiggrin:


Per the linked Alexandrian article, for various reasons IRL people are going to tend to not be better than level 6. This is in regards to toughness and skill capabilities. This is the whole point of E6, if you've heard of that: it lets adventurers be legendary heroes, while still keeping things very roughly realistic. Lvl 16 aristocrat is a bad assumption for the willpower of the people involved, but it's also kinda irrelevant. Being at-will and high DC against low-level enemies (be they experienced politicians or button-pressers somewhere in the military chain of command) means that there's going to be a pretty good chance of it working, and it only needs to work once on a given person. If there's another layer that needs to be suggested? Just go get them too. They're not going to be any more ready for a succubus than the president was.

I haven't heard of E6. Is it the theory that real world people are all leel 1-6. If so, I ask again if there's any authority for it, or is it still just the opinion of that article.

Your point about repeated attempts is a good one though. If a failed attempt is made, does the subject realise it do you think.

Anyway, I had a quick look at the spell description and it did say that suggesting "some obviously harmful act automatically negates the effect of the spell". A world leader would know better than anyone (certainly better than the Succubus) that a nuclear launch would lead to MAD

. I mean that is the point of the Succubus seeking to do it of course.


In the US? You're probably correct, getting nukes launched is going to be a very difficult process with a number of checks to make sure the person who wants them launched has the authority to do so. But because of Mutually-Assured Destruction, all it takes is any one person who has nukes launching them. The whole system is only as strong as the weakest link. And because MAD is a thing, every government in the world that's nuke-capable has to be ready to launch at a moment's notice in case somebody else launches - because the system only works if the time between "you find out Russia is nuking you" and "the nuke has arrived" is enough time for you to launch your own nukes at Russia. All it takes is finding the country with the lamest nuclear security, and the whole world tumbles into an apocalypse. And there's a lot of countries with nukes.

I used the term "world leader" rather than 'president' deliberately because I suspect it would be true in most (if not all) nuclear countries. But, other than the US, I think it is probably speculation on both of our parts - we don't know. And I am reluctant to speculate because of the no-politics rules.

I'm not sure that it only requires one country though. I think it might require only one of the big powers with a large stockpile of nukes. But I think that some countries only have sufficient nukes (or their nukes are limited by delivery systems) such that the wouldn't do much damage. If country A launches a small number of nukes and country b, country B responds, I don't think country C would necessarily launch. They can calculate trajectory as soon as the nuke begins its ballistic trajectory.


It's difficult to express how incredulous I am at how resistant you are to this. The teleporting, shapeshifting, mind-reading, mind-controlling, super-linguist designed by Satan to be the ultimate in infiltration and corruption can, in fact, get somebody to launch nukes and kickstart the apocalypse.

I think because I am approaching it from a different perspective. You, I suspect, are approaching it from a game perspective with the succubus as the protagonist, where a daring plan using all your unique skills is exactly the sort of thing that will succeed. I am approaching it from a more realistic perspective where, even thought the Succubus's skills make the sort of thing you are proposing possible, there are still many things that can go wrong for it. Your super-infiltrator is opposed by systems that are designed to be the ultimate in avoiding infiltration. Each has advantages (tech and magic) that the other wouldn't necessarily be aware of (although they may depending on whether its the first attempt or not). You may be right that the odds are in the Succubus favour, but I don't agree that it's a guarantee, and I certainly don't agree with the original implication that it would be simple.



"You can't prove we couldn't figure it out." That's not how proof works. I also can't prove our world isn't a dead magic zone being kept that way by a high-epic wizard. That doesn't make it a good assumption for the thought experiment.

I didn't mention proof at all. Proof is not the standard for almost anything we are talking about here. Obviously neither of us can prove a thing about the interaction of the elements of DnD and the real world.

I mean I literally said "who knows", so I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that I am making an assumption here. I am literally saying that we cannot make an assumption. You just object because that stymies your own assumptions as well.


Yes, but tests are generally known about beforehand (maybe not to the public, but certainly to the government). When somebody tests a nuclear warhead out, the world governments are generally aware of it beforehand - they know it's gonna happen, they don't need to immediately react. But if an unexpected launch happens? They're going to know very quickly - maybe not all of them, but somebody's gonna have the intelligence services in place to know it's happening, and radar and the like will find out very quickly as well. There's not going to be time for them to wait and see where it looks like the missile is launching, somebody just launched a nuke we weren't expecting them to launch. Once again, it only takes one person with twitchy fingers and limited nuclear security to freak out.

No they are not. There are states that from time to time launch tests of nuclear delivery systems without any warning. It is well publicised, but I'll not say anything more about it because of the forum rules.

the following webpage will provide context, but the relevant distinction is between intercontinental ballistic missiles. and low flying local missiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_on_warning


Incorrect - at least as far as the intensity of those bonuses. You're making very high-level assumptions about real-world politicians. Realworld politicians are not superhumanly good at convincing people. They're just pretty good at it. Succubus skill level is equivalent to IRL "best in history". And succubus aren't even particularly good by D&D standards.

Well 'superhuman' implies that they are good beyond human capacity, so better than any human can every be. So they are not that.

But they are one in a million good.

To hark back to rules, they can beat the Succubus' diplomacy check without even breaking your articles' suggestion that people not exceed level 6. The Succubus doesn't even have sense motive as a listed skill, which is outrageous for something you described as the ultimate infiltrator.


I'm thinking of it as good by IRL definitions but they're still not magic. They can't see like superman, and that's the kind of vision you need to penetrate disguises this good. It's also kind of missing the point: in D&D land, skills can be so good that they can accomplish absurd things. A super-high Spot check can make out the details of something from a thousand feet off as easily as if you were holding it. A super-high Jump check can leap tall buildings in a single bound. A super-high Balance check lets you walk on a cloud. A super-high Sleight Of Hand check lets somebody steal your underwear without touching your pants. A super-high Bluff or Diplomacy check is so powerful it counts as mind control and can convince you of absurd things with a simple statement. The idea of an old man disguising himself as a baby is laughable in real life because nobody in real life has the equivalent of a +40 disguise check.

I admit that I hadn't realised the polymorph spell (or change self using the open source rules) modifier stacked with the Succubus's disguise check - leading to +27. I'd guess the security for world leaders is +12 or so, plus an additional 6 or so for being familiar with the world leader.

If the succubus takes 10, the spot check would have to exceed 37. If my guesses for security is right, they notice the Succubus on a roll of 19 or more (so 10% of the time). The Succubus would have to pass several security each time though. We might be looking at 5 or 6 rolls, each with a 10% chance of succeeding. The odds then would be somewhat in the Succubus' favour if it tried to inflitrate once, but against if it tried to infiltrate more than once.


It's literally already been pointed out to you that Earth is semi-canon in D&D. Magic stretches across all worlds. Earth is not a spot of complete un-knowledge in the Weave. Tongues does not say "this only works on [list of languages], anything not on that list doesn't work". You're literally insisting that a demon designed for corrupting mortals can't speak their language just because English isn't in the player's handbook.

I thought we were talking about the real world here, but adjusted to allow magic and other things necessary for the villain's abilities to work. Perhaps a question for the OP.

I am not 'literally' suggesting anything about English in the players handbook, but I understand what you are trying to say without the hyperbole. If your only point here is about language, it has now been settled by the OP - Tongues does allow the villain to understand human languages.


Nothing is more emblematic of this argument than you looking at a 6 HD creature with a few SLAs and saying "that's the best we have", all while assuming that the reason it only has a chance instead of a guarantee is because all IRL people are superhumanly competent and paranoid all the time.

I don't think I've suggested anyone in the real world is superhuman. Only that they can be very skilled and able to do things requiring skill checks of over DC30. But the players handbook pretty clearly implies they can in several cases. For example, escaping masterwork manacles is DC35, but real life escape artists have escaped locks more difficult than any manacles that could have been created in medieval times. The high jump world record requires a check in the mid 30s. Picking an amazing lock is DC40, but there have been people who can pick any medieval lock.

Hyperbolic exageration of what I am saying is doing you no favours, I will simply point out where you are doing that, as I have many times already.


For a painfully obvious example of something better, we could go with the Lilitu, an evolved form of succubus.

Link because I can't count on you to search up anything for yourself (https://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/block/Lilitu)

It's basically just a succubus with another +10 to most skills, although it's also got much better Diplomacy and Sense Motive, and 5th lvl cleric spells. It's not even all that cool, it's just slightly cooler than a succubus. and still, it's skills are starting to have a chance at some of those super-high capabilities.

So the Succubus is not the ultimate infiltrator you described it as earlier after all?

I accept that there are more dangerous creatures than the Succubus. It was poor form of me to make the dig I did.


A mid-level expert with the right items could waltz into wherever they want and nobody would think to stop them. A mid-high-level factotum could just become president of a nuclear-capable country as soon as they showed up, political process be damned. A high-level wizard could teleport around the world, untouchably and undetectably, irresistibly mind controlling whoever he wants into doing whatever he wants.[/quotes]

Some of this may be true, some may not. We could discuss, but I think our present points of discussion are extensive enough to keep us going.

[quote]{Scrub the post, scrub the quote} Magic and skills work the way they say they work. Real-world politicians aren't as skilled as gods or as tough as tanks. We are not anywhere near as far from the possibility of nuclear annihilation as you think we are.

Yep, the hyperbolic exaggeration again. Real world world leaders are very skilled at persuading and resisting persuasion is all I said.

[bekeleven]

The strongest DnD characters that can't conquer the earth are level infinity fighters. That is, a block of BAB and HP. Saves too, why not. A skill monkey (like, a diplomancer) Could potentially take over the world if they had a good start (speak the language, don't attract too much attention) but otherwise they're also a big mundane brick even at high levels.

As for spellcasters, there are some mid-tier casters that the earth could suppress. Like warmages and sorcerers, depending on spells known. Basically anybody able to drop a bomb then teleport away would be hard for conventional technology to answer, as would invisibility, dominate, and many forms of minionmancy (depending on our outer planes situation). But beyond "I hit the ground and destroy the earth," there's no level at which to-hit or damage behind an existential threat to our civilizations. The system doesn't support mundanes that can't be answered by a modern military.


I am reminded of that episode of Buffy where an ancient vampire is prophesied to be immune to any man-made weapon... so she takes it out with a rocket launcher. Because that prophesy was centuries old and rocket launchers were invented later.Specifically, the Judge was immune from any "forged" weapon, but rocket launchers aren't forged.

[Mechalich]

As for spellcasters, there are some mid-tier casters that the earth could suppress. Like warmages and sorcerers, depending on spells known. Basically anybody able to drop a bomb then teleport away would be hard for conventional technology to answer, as would invisibility, dominate, and many forms of minionmancy (depending on our outer planes situation).

One thing of note here is that the villain needs some way to increase their damage output, because the modern Earth is big, heavily settled, and contains billions of people. A high-level wizard who teleports in, novas a whole bunch of high-damage AoEs, and then teleports out is a massive menace - especially is they effectively target command and control resources - but not a world-destroying threat. There's simply too much stuff for one person to destroy if they have to go block by block.

Minionomancy and mind control offer a path around this problem, as does the ability to breed spawn on a somewhat longer timescale.

[bekeleven]

A high-level wizard who teleports in, novas a whole bunch of high-damage AoEs, and then teleports out is a massive menace - especially is they effectively target command and control resources - but not a world-destroying threat.

Realistically, you don't need to threaten the world. Demonstrating the ability to counter the current world rulers' defenses is enough to force capitulation, and a wizard can accomplish that as soon as they get divination spells that penetrate stone and lead.

[Liquor Box]

In the post you quoted it clearly said a changeling enchanter, so the changeling would be getting their magical powers from their enchanter wizard levels...

Ah, I missed this, thanks. What level do you think it would need to be?


Anyways, no time frame was given, I don't see any reason that if a changeling wizard came to earth they would have to immediately start trying to take over or go full murderhobo. They could easily take time to learn the language and familiarize themselves with the powers, styles of dress, and mannerisms. That seems pretty standard for someone who is going stealth infiltrator to over take a planet. Based on what changelings are I don't think it would take them that long to learn earth languages (they really only need a few languages to enact world domination 2-3 not 1k...) or to pickup earth human dress and mannerisms. Seriously it would probably only take a few days for a changeling to pickup human dress and mannerisms, there isn't exactly anything very complicated about either.

I agree that this is how it would have to go about its business. Doing things like learning magic and about ordinary tech would seem to be low risk.

I'm not sure how the scenario works though. The changling enchanter gets transported to earth somehow, and understands its mission. Does the the earth somehow also understand that there is an other-worldly infiltrator coming for them? If so, the delay might allow earth look for it, to ready its defences. If we imagine that magic did not previously exist in the real world, but is introduced when the changeling arrives, then time gives the real world a chance to discover it, and maybe to tap into it.


I mean you are half right so go you, it would be great if you fully read what you are commenting on and quoting, like in the last comment the answer is in what you quoted. I specified 'a UN meeting where all the heads of state of the world are present'; sure that doesn't happen every day but it does happen every what 2-4 years?


I'm not sure that's right, but I am concerned that discussing it further might violate the forum rules. Apologies if I misread your post in any way.

That being the case, let's proceed on the basis that there are indeed summits that have a large number of world leaders present.


Yes talking specifically about religion is an issue but its fine as long as skirt around the specifying any actual religion and the specifics really aren't important.

I'm afraid I am not confident that this is right, and I'd rather not take the risk.


All of this is really dependent on how things occur. If we have a situation where one BBEG whether villain or monster comes to earth somehow and thinks to themselves 'hey I can totally become king of this backwater planet.' Taking the time to learn about and understand earth (languages, people, religion, and so forth) would be quite normal and wouldn't be that hard to do or take that much extra time. Maybe a year or two to get all their ducks in a row. After that it is just a matter of implementation where they start their infiltration plan or religious cult or whatever.

Blending into society honestly wouldn't be that hard, I mean you get a general idea of human fashion and mannerisms by looking at humans in any city for a day meanwhile everyone thinks you are just cosplaying or some crazy homeless person (I have seen plenty who don't seem to have a good grasp on human clothes). After that doing a simple robbery, or even going to a homeless shelter can get you normal human clothes and supplies to blend in while you learn about earth society.

On the other hand, if instead we have a situation where say a rift breaks open and suddenly we have d&d pouring into earth, then sure the time crunch makes it harder to go infiltrator than the above. And yet the chaos caused by other d&d entities invading would be good cover for said infiltrator or infiltrators to be even less noticed.

Really happy to discuss the specifics of ho this might or might not occur, but not if the way you think it will occur is through some religious means. It may or may not be a good way for the villain to proceed, but I just don't think we are allowed to discuss it.

As mentioned earlier though, I will agree that the way the scenario comes about makes a big difference. I think it's clear from the scenario that other DnD monsters are pouring through - the OP clarified that this is not a war of worlds. But what knowledge of the other each starts with is important.


I think you gloss over a bit how hard it would be for earth to understand and integrate magic. Sure when we realize invisibility is a thing we can put up countermeasures like using flour and what not very quickly but to actually fully understand all the possible magics out there especially the less obvious ones like charms and compulsions would take quite a while and it might take decades to create true defenses against them. Once a caster knows our languages they could easily use say detect thoughts to figure out passwords and gleam important information from people; charm, suggestion, glibness, and other such enchantments can easily be leveraged to get information out of people and make them do stuff. Even if we know the invaders have such powers we would struggle to do anything about it.

I may be underestimating the difficulty real world people would have coming to terms with magic, in my effort to emphasise the difficulty DnD folk would have coming to terms with tech. I agree that spells would give invaders advantages in the same way our tech would give us advantags, and it would be diffiult for each to come to terms with, and counter, the other.

I don't read the detect thoughts spell as granting access to passcodes - it refers to surface thoughts only.


You must be looking at the 3.0 version of succubus? 3.5 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#succubus) has change shape. The real key to this is what we know at any one time, the more we know about magic and what types are out their the more safeguards and roadblocks would be put in place to prevent a succubus, changeling or so forth from impersonating anyone. But if we have no clue about magic, or this type of magic then it wouldn't be that hard, seriously there was some random guy pretending to be European royalty and getting into all sorts of places...

No, I am looking definitely looking at the Succubus in the 3.5 monster manual.

I assumed that the difference was between the DnD 3.5 rules and the open source SRD rules, which appear to have slight difference. It could also possibly be because there is some errata incorporated into the SRD Succubus.

I think that security in the modern world around world leaders is much stricter than medieval Europe.

I also think that it would be simple to counteract the Succubus' impersonation abilities if we knew about them in advance. Phones these days have fingerprint detectors. These and more could easily be incorporated into any place that world leaders are. What we don't know (because it is secret) is how many such measures are in place now.


They don't know anything about Earth but know they are in another world. They have to figure Earth out on their own.

A shapeshifter can mate with anything on Earth if they can do that in DnD (I am no expert on the sexual biology of every DnD creature).

Tongues spell works.

They can summon other creatures if they have that ability or spell yes.

Earth is connected to the ethereal plane yes.

No new spells unless they could do that already.

Epic deflection deflects bullets from primitive firearms but not modern weapons; it does nothing to a nuke.

No Dragon Magazine. This version of Earth does not have Dungeons and Dragons.

This is helpful.

Another question - how does the scenario come about?

Is the villain simply ported to our world with its equipment, and knowledge that it's goal is to destroy our world and not be destroyed itself?

If so, does the real world get knowledge that there's an other-worldly being here to destroy it? Does it get some idea of that being's abilities and identity?

Does magic start to work in our world with the villains arrival?

[masamune1]

This is helpful.

Another question - how does the scenario come about?

Is the villain simply ported to our world with its equipment, and knowledge that it's goal is to destroy our world and not be destroyed itself?

If so, does the real world get knowledge that there's an other-worldly being here to destroy it? Does it get some idea of that being's abilities and identity?

Does magic start to work in our world with the villains arrival?

I assume magic has always worked on Earth but most people just didn't know about it and fewer ever made it work. Just imagine that the occasional story of magic and monsters and miracles actually were true but are considered myth, legend and superstition.

The villain or monster is ported to our world and finds itself stranded, so it decides to make the most of its' situation. They will act in character so whether they will try and destroy things or take over the planet or just be jerks or whatever will depend on their personality and goals

[liquidformat]

So my assumption is that in a situation with a single invader that neither side knows anything about the tech/magic of the other and that seems to be OP's stance as well.

I am not completely sure what level the changeling enchanter would need to be I think as low as level 5 they could give it a shot as that is the level they can get suggestion. Level 9 would probably be much better since you get access dominate person and some really nice divinations by then.

If I had to build a character for this I think I might actually go up to level 10 so I can get dominate person and telepathy from mindbender the build would be something like Changeling Enchanter 3/Master Specialist 6/Mindbender 1. Master Specialist 5 and 6 could be replaced with something else, it is really the minor esoterica that prevents subjects of your compulsion spells from gaining a bonus on their save when doing things against their nature I would be after.


Really happy to discuss the specifics of ho this might or might not occur, but not if the way you think it will occur is through some religious means. It may or may not be a good way for the villain to proceed, but I just don't think we are allowed to discuss it.

I think we can have the conversation without talking about real world religion, lets say the BBEG sets out pretending to be human and trying to create a cult with themselves setup as a 'god'/representative of a god. That seems par for the course for most cults from my limited understanding of them. The huge advantage said BBEG would have over normal cult leaders is magic. Without going into specifics we have plenty of real world proof that a very charismatic person with the right drive can setup a cult and have it grow quite large. Now imagine if they could also leverage magic, say healing disease or do other such things of their followers to display their 'divine power' in modern earth that has no experience of magic I think people would flock to this cult in droves and it really wouldn't take long before the cult became powerful around the world.

Just think of it, how many people would think that they had seen proof that a god exists if they see someone cure a disease or do other magic? The cult would explode forth like wildfire and would become a dominate religion around the world in no time.


I may be underestimating the difficulty real world people would have coming to terms with magic, in my effort to emphasise the difficulty DnD folk would have coming to terms with tech. I agree that spells would give invaders advantages in the same way our tech would give us advantags, and it would be diffiult for each to come to terms with, and counter, the other.

I believe the invader would pickup and understand our technology a lot quicker than we would their magic. Especially in the case of a stealth infiltrator who is purposely trying to hide their magic. Our technology (mostly referring to phones internet and such) is designed to be user friendly and for someone to pickup and understand quickly. It also wouldn't be that hard for them to take the form of an old person and go in a cellphone store and ask questions once they know the language. Heck just go invisible and hangout in a store electronics service area.


I don't read the detect thoughts spell as granting access to passcodes - it refers to surface thoughts only.
yes and no it really depends on when you are using detect thoughts. If someone asks you for password said password will be a surface thought for that person at that time. Similarly if someone is about to type in a password it will be a surface thought at the time. So yeah if you just randomly hit someone with detect thoughts you probably won't get anything useful but with the right timing you can get a lot of useful information.


I think that security in the modern world around world leaders is much stricter than medieval Europe.

I also think that it would be simple to counteract the Succubus' impersonation abilities if we knew about them in advance. Phones these days have fingerprint detectors. These and more could easily be incorporated into any place that world leaders are. What we don't know (because it is secret) is how many such measures are in place now.

I agree with you on both points, with the two scenarios I presented in the first case I assumed earth is completely oblivious to our BBEG and its powers. In that case I think you are over rating modern security. We don't expect for someone who looks, sounds, and acts like our coworker Bob to not be Bob.

Probably the biggest hurtle for and shapechanger would be finger print scans granted normal people do have work arounds for that so it seems reasonable that as soon as the infiltrator came across the existence of finger print scanners they would start researching how to counteract them but that would take some time and enginuity.

[masamune1]

Regarding religion, you could have someone like Fzoul or some other cleric show up, figure out where they are and how the world works, and happily start going round to people's doors asking if they have heard of their Lord and Master, Bane.

If such a thing happens, I (the almighty OP) allow Bane or whoever to hear and respond to prayers and grant spells to newly recruited clerics as surely as it would happen anywhere else.

Though if our villain thinks that becoming yet another Second Coming of Jesus imposter will work better they are free to do that as well.

[Malphegor]

I think America and other weapons ho nations would be particularly happy to hear that you can hold back most devils and demons with sufficient dakka. Their mortal bodies may die and they will reform in whatever plane they hail form… but they will die, here and now. Many will be tough and strong against mere mortal weapons and they can have tricks here and there to win occasionally against humanity…

But against a swiftly united humanity? If the forces of evil, chaotic or lawful, drop the ball and don’t target our leaders and logistical hierarchies effectively, if we’re too alien in nature due to being an ocp for them… then we will be able to hold off hell unleashed upon the Earth for a long, long time, until eventually the infinite abyss overwhelms us through sheer attrition and our plane is just another layer of chaotic evil and the decay of all things

[Tzardok]

Why should earth be an ocp? We are humans, the race that is propably the most common on the different worlds of D&D. What in our way of thinking or acting is incomprehensible to the beings that are literally born from our souls?

[icefractal]

When did this thread flip from "Strongest DnD villain Earth can beat" to "Weakest DnD villain Earth can't beat"? :smalltongue:

On the original, the Tarrasque is CR 20 and that's pretty easily beaten - artillery barrage or bombing to take it down, then set up a drill or continual electrical current to keep it from regenerating. And then presumably study the hell out of it for science.

So what's the maximum? Well there's a lot of books to look through, but The Mantis God (CR 30) (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/the-mantis-god) looks like a contender (PF1, but it was originally published for 3.5E).
It's more ambiguous than the Tarrasque, because it has Improved Evasion and thus might be able to avoid AoE effects like bombs if they're represented by a Reflex save, but it's still ultimately just a tough bruiser that can be taken down with sufficient force and then kept unconscious forever. It does have an escape method (Gate, travel version only), but that's limited to once per minute, and this thing's not subtle, so a sufficiently rapid response could take it out before having a chance to flee.

If we add Epic to the mix, the Devastation Beetle is CR 50 and is just a really big beetle that breathes acid. It's mindless and only goes 10 mph, and doesn't have Regeneration so even intermittent attacks will eventually take it down. Almost feels like cheating though, since this is a total joke as CR 50 within D&D as well.

[AsuraKyoko]

Just because we're human wouldn't necessarily prevent us from being an Out of Context Problem. If our technology is sufficiently advanced as to invalidate much of the conventional concerns for a D&D world, we could easily be an OoCP. The same goes the other way; a sufficiently powerful creature that can do things that are completely impossible for us could also be an OoCP.

[Tzardok]

People don't stop being people just because they have access to better technology or different philosophies (not that they are that different; there propably isn't a single societal philosophy that isn't reflected somewhere in DnD). The core, the way people act and feel, remains the same. And if you understand that, then it doesn't matter if I suddenly have a technology that for all you know is an unknown super-spell, I am still comprehensible to you.

[Bohandas]

The Shadowpocalypse will absolutely happen unless there's some sort of cheese that causes them to die out immediately. Was there a prophet or saint of some sort that blessed the ocean at some point?

I know that there are several rivers that are held to be sacred by one group or another


Pretty fun to play in League of Legends, but he's kinda fallen out of favor due to power creep from what I remember

This Sun Wukong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_King), the actual mythological figure, not a video game character. Y'know, the one who could shatter mountains and single-handedly fight against all the legions of heaven to their ignominious defeat, and who was bested only by the literally omnipotent Buddha?

To be fair, the power creep thing applies to the OG Sun Wukong too. If you read the novel, once he actually starts on the titular Journey To The West he ends up getting his ass handed to him by just about every demon and rogue immortal that he comes across

[Liquor Box]

So my assumption is that in a situation with a single invader that neither side knows anything about the tech/magic of the other and that seems to be OP's stance as well.

Yeah, the OP has ruled on that. It's a pretty big advantage for the DnD villain that they have time to prepare before the world even know they're there.


I am not completely sure what level the changeling enchanter would need to be I think as low as level 5 they could give it a shot as that is the level they can get suggestion. Level 9 would probably be much better since you get access dominate person and some really nice divinations by then.

If I had to build a character for this I think I might actually go up to level 10 so I can get dominate person and telepathy from mindbender the build would be something like Changeling Enchanter 3/Master Specialist 6/Mindbender 1. Master Specialist 5 and 6 could be replaced with something else, it is really the minor esoterica that prevents subjects of your compulsion spells from gaining a bonus on their save when doing things against their nature I would be after.

Understood

And step by step, how would you go about embedding yourself in the world, infiltrating whichever power structure you're after, and then leveraging off that to cause the world's destruction?


I think we can have the conversation without talking about real world religion, lets say the BBEG sets out pretending to be human and trying to create a cult with themselves setup as a 'god'/representative of a god. That seems par for the course for most cults from my limited understanding of them. The huge advantage said BBEG would have over normal cult leaders is magic. Without going into specifics we have plenty of real world proof that a very charismatic person with the right drive can setup a cult and have it grow quite large. Now imagine if they could also leverage magic, say healing disease or do other such things of their followers to display their 'divine power' in modern earth that has no experience of magic I think people would flock to this cult in droves and it really wouldn't take long before the cult became powerful around the world.

Just think of it, how many people would think that they had seen proof that a god exists if they see someone cure a disease or do other magic? The cult would explode forth like wildfire and would become a dominate religion around the world in no time.

I get how you think it would work. I don't think it probably would not work. But the reasons are related to real life cults and real world religion. So even though it might not contravene the rules for you to lay out your theory, it may be against the rules for me to respond.

The religious cult idea is only one of two or three ideas you have isn't it. We can discuss the others.


I believe the invader would pickup and understand our technology a lot quicker than we would their magic. Especially in the case of a stealth infiltrator who is purposely trying to hide their magic. Our technology (mostly referring to phones internet and such) is designed to be user friendly and for someone to pickup and understand quickly. It also wouldn't be that hard for them to take the form of an old person and go in a cellphone store and ask questions once they know the language. Heck just go invisible and hangout in a store electronics service area.

The villain certainly would now that the OP has ruled that it can get here and move around and learn as it pleases. I expect it would still never be good at tech (most adults who don't learn it as children aren't), but they'd get the basics.

I don't think it would be any easier to understand the basics of tech than the basics of magic (not how to perform it, just a general idea of the sorts of things it can do) if you had equal exposure. But given that the OP has ruled the villain can take its time and prepare while the world is oblivious I doubt exposure would be equal.

There would still be some risk during the preperation time. For example, in your being invisible in the shop idea - being invisible is not proof against discovery - they might be heard, a shop assistant might walk into them etc.


yes and no it really depends on when you are using detect thoughts. If someone asks you for password said password will be a surface thought for that person at that time. Similarly if someone is about to type in a password it will be a surface thought at the time. So yeah if you just randomly hit someone with detect thoughts you probably won't get anything useful but with the right timing you can get a lot of useful information.

This feels like an area which is ambiguous enough that a DM would have to rule on it. I don't think the password would be a surface thought unless you deliberately trying to remember it (if they type it in thoughlessly I still think it wouldn't be surface). If someone asked me my eftpos pin, I don;t thin of my pin, I wonder why they are asking.

Suggestion is similar. If you use the spell to suggest a course of action that will lead to nucelar anhileation, would it work, or would it fail because you cannot make a creature do something that harms itself (and the world leader understands the nuclear balance better than our villain). No doubt this would lead to your villain trying to frame it in a way which sounds reasonable. This would again require a ruling from a DM.

Where this leaves us is that it may be possible for your changling enchanter (or Vecna's Succubus) to manipulate some world leader into a nuclear launch or similar. But it relies on the DM ruling in the villain's favour on a number of points (as well as a few roles in the villain's favour). From a real life perspective, it may succeed or it may not.


I agree with you on both points, with the two scenarios I presented in the first case I assumed earth is completely oblivious to our BBEG and its powers. In that case I think you are over rating modern security. We don't expect for someone who looks, sounds, and acts like our coworker Bob to not be Bob.

Probably the biggest hurtle for and shapechanger would be finger print scans granted normal people do have work arounds for that so it seems reasonable that as soon as the infiltrator came across the existence of finger print scanners they would start researching how to counteract them but that would take some time and enginuity.

I agree with you that now we know that earth is oblivious until the BBEG makes a mistake, the BBEG odds improve dramatically.

I also agree that I don't ask Bob to verify his identity. But Bob is not a world leader or someone who has access to a world leader. In that case, they may be asked, even if the security knows them well. I understand that it is standard practice before a nuke launch.

I don't know work arounds for finger print scanners, and if those work arounds are tech based, I don't think our invader would figure any out from a few years of immersion. I also think that work arounds that may work on your phone, may not work on the finger print scanners on a world leader's security detail. That's putting aside the possibility of voice recognition technology, face recognition technology (both of which can be passive), ocular scanners etc. Unfortunately I am only speculating though, because we don't know what level of security they have.


When did this thread flip from "Strongest DnD villain Earth can beat" to "Weakest DnD villain Earth can't beat"? :smalltongue:

On the original, the Tarrasque is CR 20 and that's pretty easily beaten - artillery barrage or bombing to take it down, then set up a drill or continual electrical current to keep it from regenerating. And then presumably study the hell out of it for science.

So what's the maximum? Well there's a lot of books to look through, but The Mantis God (CR 30) (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/the-mantis-god) looks like a contender (PF1, but it was originally published for 3.5E).
It's more ambiguous than the Tarrasque, because it has Improved Evasion and thus might be able to avoid AoE effects like bombs if they're represented by a Reflex save, but it's still ultimately just a tough bruiser that can be taken down with sufficient force and then kept unconscious forever. It does have an escape method (Gate, travel version only), but that's limited to once per minute, and this thing's not subtle, so a sufficiently rapid response could take it out before having a chance to flee.

If we add Epic to the mix, the Devastation Beetle is CR 50 and is just a really big beetle that breathes acid. It's mindless and only goes 10 mph, and doesn't have Regeneration so even intermittent attacks will eventually take it down. Almost feels like cheating though, since this is a total joke as CR 50 within D&D as well.

Indeed. If you made a list of the most powerful creatures in DnD, earth would have a good shot at defeating some of them (probably including any who rely on direct force).

[Tzardok]

Forgive me, but what does 'ocp' stand for?

Out of Context Problem. Something that is completely outside your frame of reference.

[Liquor Box]

Out of Context Problem. Something that is completely outside your frame of reference.

Thanks.

Yes, we are the same species, and are probably similar in our thought processes etc. Even though our cultures will be different, you meet lots of different cultures within DnD..

But the tech here is the difference. Imagine reaching back to 1200AD and bringing a person into modern times. They would not know how to act or conduct themselves for a long time. So I do think that some parts of the real world would be completely outside a DnD villain frame of reference - to the same extent as if a real world person went to DnD.

[masamune1]

I imagine villains from Eberron or some other higher tech setting would have an easier time adapting to modern Earth than those from elsewhere.

You also have to consider that some of these villains would be outsiders and immortals who see technology change all the time.

Plus, anyone with a high enough INT is going to be a genius or even a super-genius.

[Tzardok]

Thanks.

Yes, we are the same species, and are probably similar in our thought processes etc. Even though our cultures will be different, you meet lots of different cultures within DnD..

But the tech here is the difference. Imagine reaching back to 1200AD and bringing a person into modern times. They would not know how to act or conduct themselves for a long time. So I do think that some parts of the real world would be completely outside a DnD villain frame of reference - to the same extent as if a real world person went to DnD.

I don't think so. Spelljammer has spaceships fighting wars. In the Forgotten Realms epic magic eradicated nations more than once. Eberron has enough magic items to put light switches into rich people's homes and to instantly communicate between all cities on the continent. And spells to search libraries and discover information in a way not unlike wikipedia exist too. Nothing earth does is really unique, at best the ubiquitousness is going to give a bit of pause.

[Liquor Box]

I imagine villains from Eberron or some other higher tech setting would have an easier time adapting to modern Earth than those from elsewhere.

You also have to consider that some of these villains would be outsiders and immortals who see technology change all the time.

Plus, anyone with a high enough INT is going to be a genius or even a super-genius.

I agree. If they come from a setting with some tech it would be easier. How easy depends on how similar their tech is to ours. Trains and electricity existed 150 years, but take a person from 150 years ago into the present and they'd struggle.

Being super clever might help. But even a genius from 1200 (or 1850 if we are thinking of something more similar in terms of tech) would struggle I think.


I don't think so. Spelljammer has spaceships fighting wars. In the Forgotten Realms epic magic eradicated nations more than once. Eberron has enough magic items to put light switches into rich people's homes and to instantly communicate between all cities on the continent. And spells to search libraries and discover information in a way not unlike wikipedia exist too. Nothing earth does is really unique, at best the ubiquitousness is going to give a bit of pause.

Is your point is that, in some settings, magic replicates the function of technology or is just as powerful?

That may be. but I don't think it helps much. ordinary people in those DnD settings still don't live anything like real world people. That's true even in tech settings like Eberron, but more true in other settings. Communication between all cities on a contient is different from almost every person being able to communicate anywhere in the world. Knowing that teleport magic exists in Forgotten Realms doesn't help a person know how to cross the Atlantic in the real world. Simply people live very different lives in the real world from the DnD setting. If you have a super fast movement speed in DnD, you are not going to know that pretty much everyone (not just those with access to magic) has a pesonal transportation device that can move many times faster than you can.

Of course, if they have a few years to assimilate, they'd overcome this to an extent. They'd have a decent idea how common tech works, and will have learned to use simply forms of tech. But that would also be true in reverse, or with respect to most theoretical occasions where persons are moved to a world which is very different from their own.

[Zombimode]

If we add Epic to the mix, the Devastation Beetle is CR 50 and is just a really big beetle that breathes acid. It's mindless and only goes 10 mph, and doesn't have Regeneration so even intermittent attacks will eventually take it down. Almost feels like cheating though, since this is a total joke as CR 50 within D&D as well.

I'm not sure if I would classify the Tarrasque or an Devastation Beetle as a villain. Both might appear as hostiles, but they are not villains as they don't actively plan any nefarious schemes.

[Tzardok]

That may be. but I don't think it helps much. ordinary people in those DnD settings still don't live anything like real world people. That's true even in tech settings like Eberron, but more true in other settings. Communication between all cities on a contient is different from almost every person being able to communicate anywhere in the world. Knowing that teleport magic exists in Forgotten Realms doesn't help a person know how to cross the Atlantic in the real world. Simply people live very different lives in the real world from the DnD setting. If you have a super fast movement speed in DnD, you are not going to know that pretty much everyone (not just those with access to magic) has a pesonal transportation device that can move many times faster than you can.


My point is that technology can not do anything that will break somebody's mind. Our villain is not going to think it inconceivable that a car exists because he has heard about things like that. He may be suprised how common cars are, but that's a one-time thing. An aeroplane won't be an unimaginable wonder, just a better airship. The idea that armies have access to weapons of mass desctruction isn't impossible if you were there when the elves destroyed Jhaamdath with a tsunami.

Besides, who cares about simple people? Simple people aren't world-conquering villains. Especially as the whole "ocp" discussion began with fiends and other extraplanar immortals.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I think the ubiquitous dissemination of information will be the big OCP thing a visitor (or invader) will be hit with, although that works in their favor more than anything. We have more access to more information than any civilization (or collection thereof) in history, vastly more than any D&D setting I'm aware of. The fact that the villain (if intelligent) will have access to this much freely distributed knowledge will be just a bit mind-blowing. The fact that said villain can use that against us makes his (or her, or its) threat potentially much, much worse.

If he's not a fighter, anyway. A fighter wouldn't be able to do much regardless.

[masamune1]

I think the ubiquitous dissemination of information will be the big OCP thing a visitor (or invader) will be hit with, although that works in their favor more than anything. We have more access to more information than any civilization (or collection thereof) in history, vastly more than any D&D setting I'm aware of. The fact that the villain (if intelligent) will have access to this much freely distributed knowledge will be just a bit mind-blowing. The fact that said villain can use that against us makes his (or her, or its) threat potentially much, much worse.

If he's not a fighter, anyway. A fighter wouldn't be able to do much regardless.

Well, DnD gods for example are telepathically aware of what thousands, millions or even tens of millions of people are doing at any given time (sometimes even things that have not happened yet), and can focus their attention across multiple different points simultaneously as well as speak literally every language ever and extend their senses across several miles, as well as possess almost perfect knowledge of whatever is covered by their portfolio.

I think a deity would be too much for us so this thread isn't really about them, but that gives you an idea of where the ceiling is. Lots of more "in the know" DnD characters have ways of accessing crazy amounts of information already.

As to the fighter- depends on the fighter and how they use their abilities. Any high-level DnD fighter would be superhuman so could leverage that for status, power and influence.

[Bohandas]

The real problem with fighting a D&D deity is at will teleportation and their ability to be in multiple places at once and regenerate from an aspect or avatar if their primary is slain. Otherwise it would be easy enough to take them down with atomic weapons


Of course, if they have a few years to assimilate, they'd overcome this to an extent.

They could assimilate in a few days if they had the scholar's touch spell and access to a few textbooks

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well, DnD gods for example are telepathically aware of what thousands, millions or even tens of millions of people are doing at any given time (sometimes even things that have not happened yet), and can focus their attention across multiple different points simultaneously as well as speak literally every language ever and extend their senses across several miles, as well as possess almost perfect knowledge of whatever is covered by their portfolio.

I think a deity would be too much for us so this thread isn't really about them, but that gives you an idea of where the ceiling is. Lots of more "in the know" DnD characters have ways of accessing crazy amounts of information already.

As to the fighter- depends on the fighter and how they use their abilities. Any high-level DnD fighter would be superhuman so could leverage that for status, power and influence.Yes, but that information is hardly publicly available. In our world, the public has more knowledge at our fingertips at nearly all times than the entirety of every single civilization in the rest of history put together, cubed, even if you only start counting 30 years ago.

[masamune1]

The real problem with a deity is at will teleportation and their ability to be in multiple places at once and regenerate from an aspect or avatar if their primary is slain. Otherwise it would be easy enough to take them down with atomic weapons

So besides the fact they are almost invincible, semi-omnipresent and can vanish at will it should be doable.

Though even this really underplays what a deity is capable of- Vecna, for instance, knows any secret that affects more than 500 people which includes things like scandals that could topple governments and nuclear launch codes, and he can kill anyone from a distance of up ten miles away to name just two of his powers, and Vecna is one of the weaker gods.

[Bohandas]

So besides the fact they are almost invincible

I think a lot of modern bombs, even the non-atomic ones, would do damage on scales where damage reduction in the 10-30 range wouldn't really matter

[masamune1]

I think a lot of modern bombs, even the non-atomic ones, would do damage on scales where damage reduction in the 10-30 range wouldn't really matter

Yes, but even if they do harm or even kill them, the deity will come back (assuming it even was the deity you hit and not an avatar or illusion etc) so that would still fall under "almost invincible".

[Liquor Box]

I'm not sure if I would classify the Tarrasque or an Devastation Beetle as a villain. Both might appear as hostiles, but they are not villains as they don't actively plan any nefarious schemes.

I must admit, when I first saw the OP, I thought it was talking about particular known villain's within the setting, rather than building your own villain. But I think the intent was bring a person or monster into the real world, and give it villainous motivation.


My point is that technology can not do anything that wil break somebody's mind. Our villain is not going to think it inconceivable that a car exists because he has heard about things like that. He may be suprised how common cars are, but that's a one-time thing. An aeroplane won't be an unimaginable wonder, just a better airship. The idea that armies have access to weapons of mass desctruction isn't impossible if you were there when the elves destroyed Jhaamdath with a tsunami.

I think you and I are talking about slightly different things, which are not mutually exclusive

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems you are saying "DnD character wont be too taken aback that X is possible in the real world because X is also possible in DnD".

I am saying that "X works differently and does some different things in DnD than in the real world, so the DnD character will have to learn how X works in the real world to avoid falling in traps."


Besides, who cares about simple people? Simple people aren't world-conquering villains. Especially as the whole "ocp" discussion began with fiends and other extraplanar immortals.

Well that depends on how you think the villain will go about its business. The most advanced conversation I've seen involves the villain blending in for some time before launching their actual plan, which would mean interacting with common people. Depending on what the villain's plan is, knowing that they might be on security camera in certain places, but not in certain other places might be relevant.

The internet seems an incredibly relevant piece of tech to someone who arrives on earth knowing nothing. Probably more a case of it being useful to them if they did know how to use it, rather than a case of it being dangerous for them if they don't.

[Bohandas]

I think the ubiquitous dissemination of information will be the big OCP thing a visitor (or invader) will be hit with

What does OCP mean?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

What does OCP mean?Out of Context Problem.

[Mechalich]

What does OCP mean?

"Outside-Context Problem" a term traced to the Iain M. Banks Culture universe novel Excession (which you should read). The term describes a circumstance striking some culture that is completely outside that culture's ability to even imagine happening. The outside-context part is relevant when compared to other kinds of severe but at least theoretically comprehensible problems like Black Swan events.

For example, on the scale of alien invasions there's a difference between aliens who have technology that is significantly more advanced than our own, but at least still operates within the theoretical framework of physics as we understand it compared to aliens who possess Sufficiently Advanced Technology that operates on principles we have no capability to even comprehend, such as a post-singularity machine intelligence that utilized science that is so advanced even the smartest human mind cannot possibly comprehend it.

In the context of beings from D&D invading the real-world, the OCP issue arises when the invaders start utilizing resources - for example necromancy - that fundamentally violate the basic underpinnings of how reality operates as we know it (undead violate the law of conservation of energy, among other things). Likewise, in reverse, nuclear energy violates the basic model of how damage operates in 3.X D&D. In game terms this creates a divide-by-zero model failure and only authorial fiat resolutions are possible.

[masamune1]

I must admit, when I first saw the OP, I thought it was talking about particular known villain's within the setting, rather than building your own villain. But I think the intent was bring a person or monster into the real world, and give it villainous motivation.




It was any of these things.

I did expect some more named villains to be mentioned than has been, but it isn't limited to that.

[Liquor Box]

It was any of these things.

I did expect some more named villains to be mentioned than has been, but it isn't limited to that.

Are famous villains like Elminster stated out anywhere?

Edit:

He is stated in the Epic Level Handbook. Unfortunately it doesn't have a list of the spells he knows. That spell list is pretty important for discussing whether he or the earth would prevail.

[Tzardok]

Since when does Elminster count as a villain?

[masamune1]

Are famous villains like Elminster stated out anywhere?

Edit:

He is stated in the Epic Level Handbook. Unfortunately it doesn't have a list of the spells he knows. That spell list is pretty important for discussing whether he or the earth would prevail.

He's not a villain though.

But Szass Tam, Larloch, Fzoul Chembryl, Strahd, Tasha, Iuz, Manshoon (any of him), or whoever else- yeah, go nuts.

[AvatarVecna]

By every time, I think I have talked about real life vs DnD once before. Maybe twice.

And you do make that assertion that time, and like now, then you were wrong.

I'm not wrong.

My approach has us using the rules of 3.5 as they currently exist, seeing how the real world fits into that framework, and extrapolating the results from that understanding.

Your approach acknowledges that we maybe don't understand reality, and then insists that we should toss out the reality-framework we do understand, and that step one of any discussion that looks like this should be "rework all of D&D to make it more in line with reality, and then answer the question the OP asked". Your approach is to see the question "how does [D&D thing] interact with IRL" and to mentally translate that as "how does my version of [D&D thing] homebrewed to be different from normal interact with IRL". Any discussion using your approach is going to be 99% people arguing about which homebrewed version of the D&D thing we should be using.

Your approach is worthless for any meaningful discussion of the question. It is ignoring the actual premise and substituting your own.


Well, death machines is exactly what guns are, that's the thing they are designed to do, so your hyperbole doesn't land.

Good to see you're still ignoring the point: the point was that guns are not a thing that automatically, magically kills whatever you point them at.


But I agree with your underlying point - guns can't easily kill all real world creatures, let alone fantastic creatures.

Oh I see, you understood the point and just wanted to disagree.


Your post otherwise is an exercise in proving my above point. You can use analogies (you analogising a dragon to a whale) to think about how real world weapons would interact with DnD creatures.

Having said that, I think your conclusion is faulty.

You search for a real life thing that is more resistant to weapon damage than stone or iron, and cannot think of anything.

Stop right there. You are literally missing the forest for the trees right now. The point of that whole argument is not that I can't think of things that are tougher than steel. Tungsten, for example. The point I'm making is that if I were to ask you "what's the effective hardness of tungsten", you would have no answer, because Tungsten doesn't have a write-up in D&D. If we wanted to get an idea of just how tough DR 20 is, we'd need to figure out a way to directly compare a real-life measurement of "toughness" to D&D's hardness. We've got the hardness for a number of real-world materials, but real-world materials are not actually as simple as the D&D versions. I can't just be like you, making baseless statements pulled from my ass. If I wanna say "dragon scales are as tough as tungsten", I have to show my work. That's why I say that I don't know what material would even be appropriate for comparison, instead of saying that no such material exists.

The point I was making was, if we approach things from that angle, it involves a metric ton of busywork that's not relevant to 99% of the discussion, so that we can make a guess at precisely how easy it is for guns to pierce dragon scales, and thus make a guess at precisely how much damage IRL guns actually deal. Instead of using the existing attack/damage/NA/HP/DR/gun rules to approximate.

The rules system gives us an idea of how resistant dragons are supposed to be to guns. The relative attack power of a gun vs the relative defense power of a dragon is well-established within the system. You are well within your rights to say that the guns presented in the DMG aren't a great reflection of IRL guns; you are fully allowed to have opinions. But saying "and that's why guns should be much more powerful but dragons shouldn't be", and then using your homebrewed "more powerful guns" to prove that dragons are actually very weak against guns, is not really an argument that's going to convince me. All you're demonstrating is that if you make guns much stronger against dragons than they are by default in the system, then dragons are really weak.


There are lots of such things - steel is a very common example of something that is much tougher than iron. Tank armour effectiveness is often given in terms of the equivalent thickness steel. We know that much thinner tank armour is the equivilent of several times thicker steel.. I'll look up the figures later but they suggest that real life damage resistance f some materials and composites would be well into the 30s when compared to DnD hardness.

It's worth mentioning that part of the reason for the whale vs dragon comparison was to point out that whales don't actually have DR - they have HP and NA, but no DR, whereas dragons have all three. Whales do not have an invisible force field that deflects attacks away from them, they just have a thick layer of blubber that makes most attacks sent their way fail to actually hurt.

I doubt you'll look up the figures later, but hey maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. Of course, I severely doubt you'll actually put in the work to conclusively prove something like "tank armor is right around as tough as dragon scales should be".


Back to the question of bullets, one substance that is significantly more resistant to bullet damage than iron (or even steel) is kevlar. That is exactly the sort of armour that armour piercing bullets are designed to penetrate. The whole reason that kevlar was developed was because older iron and steel armour was so ineffective against even old fashioned bullets (lead balls shot by muskets). That DnD doesn't simulate demonstrates the failing of using DnD rules in a comparison like this.

"D&D doesn't simulate literally every IRL thing and that's why it's useless for this discussion."

And that's not strawmanning. It is a very light paraphrasing of that last sentence.


You are also mistaken about the effectiveness of guns against whales:

https://nammco.no/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/doc-14-makah-grey-whale-hunt.pdf

Another reference more specific to blue whales, although a less authorotative source
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/38qon4/could_you_kill_a_blue_whale_with_one_bullet/

Oh wow, so a whale that's been injured and immobilized by multiple siege engine weapons can have an enormous rifle placed directly against its spine causing it to die to a single bullet? If only D&D had mechanics for simulating that. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm#coupdeGrace)

Using "pointing a gun directly into the spine of a helpless enemy" and claiming it means that the other link (where people point out that most guns have a difficult time getting through the blubber) are wrong, I'm not really sure how to even argue. Anything I could say feels so insanely obvious that I feel pointing it out to you would be inherently insulting to your intelligence.


To avoid being strawmanned, I want to be clear that I have never suggested that a dragon could be one shotted by an ordinary gun. It may well take hundreds of bullets to down a dragon (which is more than it would take for a whale). But I think your (or DnD's) estimate that only one in 4000 would cause any damage at all is well wide of the mark.

[quote]Care to explain it then?

What even is this question? I made my joke, you ate the onion, I then explained the onion, and then you asked me to explain it? Maybe go try reading the explanation again? Or clarify what you're even asking here.


"You can't prove nukes do effect other dimensions, and that means I get to assume they cannot" is effectively the same take in reverse. So apparently the sort of 'take' you would expect from me, is the same take you default to yourself.

IRL has no framework in which we can even approximate ghosts. If you were to try and explain ghosts using only IRL physics, you couldn't. If you were to try and explain nukes using D&D rules, it's insanely easy. It's an AoE dealing fire damage (for the heat) and bludgeoning damage (for the shockwave), and has an aftereffect where the affected area forces saves vs disease (specifically, radiation sickness) for awhile. maybe poison if it's still pretty early on, since radiation that's less faded can act a lot quicker. But still, it's not hard to simulate a nuke in D&D terms unless you're deliberately pretending it is. Since one system has ghost rules and has rules that can simulate nukes well enough, while the other system has nuke rules but no ghost rules at all, the system with rules for both should take precedent on how they interact. And unless you wish to insist that a nuclear explosion is inherently magical...


I never said it was magic.

...then a nuke can't affect shadows.


It is unlike magic from DnD, and also unlike any physcial or energy effect from DnD. It is something that is of a different type from anything in DnD, so we don't know how it would interact with concepts that are unique to DnD.

You are incorrect. It is not "unlike any physical or energy effect from D&D". There exist plenty of mechanics that do a good enough job of simulating it. In the same section of the DMG that has guns, they also have dynamite. You might be aware of this, but nuclear bombs generally are measured in kilotons or megatons. This is not a measurement of the weight of the bomb itself, but rather of the weight of a pile of dynamite that could achieve a similar explosion. This is one of those "I almost feel like I'm insulting you by saying it out loud" statements, but...dynamite and nuclear bombs work pretty similarly. The nukes have this gnarly after-effect, sure, but the initial explosion is...just a big explosion.


Dynamite: This short, thin cylinder of explosive material has a fuse that must be lit before it is thrown or set. Lighting a stick of dynamite is a move action, and the dynamite goes off in the same round or up to several minutes later (depending on how long the fuse is). The explosive has a blast radius of 5 feet and deals 2d6 points of bludgeoning damage. Anyone caught within the blast radius can make a DC 15 Reflex save to take half damage.

It’s possible to bind together several sticks of dynamite so they ignite and explode at the same time. Each additional stick increases the damage by 1d6 (maximum damage 10d6) and the burst radius by 5 feet (maximum burst radius 20 feet).

Dynamite is nonmagic bludgeoning damage the same way a warhammer is. You could theoretically enchant a stick of dynamite to be magic, but by default it isn't. It's the same with nukes: by default, the explosion it causes isn't magical. It is a very straightforward physical energy effect, and the closest approximate we have within the system couldn't affect ghosts. The extreme heat inherent to large explosions is just heat, it's not being caused by magic and it's not inherently magic. Lava is extremely hot but it's not magically hot, and that's an important distinction.

We could sort of have an argument about the after-effect? Technically speaking, the incorporeal subtype does not grant immunity to poison or disease. We could argue about whether it should - does it make sense that a monk going on an ethereal adventure can breathe in a cloud of poison, or diseased air? We could maybe use our IRL knowledge of diseases to say "germs are an interdimensional threat". But since we're discussing shadows, which are also undead, it's kind of a moot point.



That's a very weak analogy. Punches do exist in DnD, so if ghosts (as imagined by DnD) aren't effected by punches, then reasonable to assume they are here either.

It's how your argument comes across.


I appreciate you being a little more specific about the class etc of the villain you are suggesting might invade. The question was about the strongest villian the world could beat. Do you think the world could beat anything short of a high level necromancer? Because if you are only raising it to make the point that there are some creatures in DnD that the world can't prevail against, I dont think anyone is arguing against it. I thought you were originally saying that a creature as weak as a shadow could win (they are the villain, not the tool) so I pointed out that you were wrong there. But you are right that, if you choose to interpret the scenario to give DnD monsters an instant "I win" button, or to make them completely invulnerable, then of course some would win. It's as pointless as discussing a scenario where magic doesn't exist.

The point of my post is that strength is relative. Is a shadow stronger than a dragon? Obviously not. But we can't can't beat a shadow. The best argument we've got for beating a shadow is that the shadow wouldn't immediately kill us without direction from a more intelligent entity, and theoretically sometime in the next decade humanity could maybe develop ghostbuster technology straight out of fiction. How widespread shadows in general are at that point is anybody's guess. "What's the strongest enemy that humanity could beat" is a weird question to answer.

It's not my fault the system makes ghosts basically impossible to deal with if you don't have magic.


These points are your opinion, and we;d have to discuss each to establish a common understanding on the,. On your first point, why wouldn't we know he exists when he gets here in a scenario where he is here and has come to defeat us? That would seem an unevenhanded way to set up the scenario.

The scenario is not about proposing a fair fight. The OP laying out the situation did not say "the villain makes a press conference to the whole world explaining their presence, their capabilities, and their limitations, and then challenged the world to see if they could overcome the villain". I don't know why you think it is. I don't know why at one second you are insisting shadows are too dumb to play tactically, and then insisting that a high-level wizard should be played in as straightforward a manner as any brute monster. A wizard with the intelligence necessary to puzzle out magic's deepest secrets is not, in fact, going to just rush an army of gun-wielding thugs on the assumption that he could 100% win a fair fight. Maybe he believes he could anyway, but it's still pretty stupid to try.

A villain whose presence is unknown to us is a villain we can't defeat. A villain whose location is unknown to us is a villain we can't defeat. A villain we can't touch is a villain we can't defeat. A villain we can't meaningfully hurt is a villain we can't defeat. A villain we can't kill is a villain we can't defeat. A villain who won't stay dead is a villain we can't defeat.


What friends? Aren't we talking about a solo villain?

Leadership is a thing. And anyway, just because the villain is invading our world on his own doesn't mean he doesn't have friends back home that can bring him back from the dead if need be.


The OP has now clarified that Tongues does work to learn real world languages. So this is covered, it was only a minor point by me anyway.

I did write a response before I saw that, which is here:

[quote]Not at all. If you can learn any language, then I think it is implicit that it means any language that actually exists. In a DnD scenario our languages do not exist. If a DnD villain was suddenly brought to life, I'm not sure that the spell suddenly incorporates the new languages that had not existed previously.

It may be that you are thinking of the real world and the DnD setting co-existing (perhaps on different planes) and the villain moving from one to the other. I am thinking that the DnD world does not exist, and from the perspective of the DnD setting, the real world does not exist. I am thinking of the scenario as imagining that we somehow created a previously non-existent DnD villian in the real world in such a way they can still use their magic and abilities.

You are wrong that you could say the same thing about any spelll - that's as bad as your punch analogy above.

I'm happy to proceed on the basis that Tongues and similar spells do work though. As mentioned previously, that was only a minor part of by objection.

Just because the English language is unknown to Elminster does not mean the English language is unknown to the gods or to the Weave. It's already established that some version of Earth exists within the D&D multiverse - and that means its languages are known to the forces that bind the universe together.


The article you've linked are you referencing it as an authority? Or do you reference because it explains points you would otheriwse have made yourself. Because I don't agree with the article on the point of level.




It starts its defence of levels by trying to debunk a criticism - that Einstein must have been high level to be as good as physics as he was, but that would suggest high hit points. It answers this by saying that Einsteins level wouldn't have been that high. It fails in that regard - Einstein is still higher level than most so would still tend to have more hit points than most (as would other elite intellectuals).

Being venerable, he would have -6 Con after everything else. It is unlikely he was particularly tough for a human being, so we can estimate his Con at 6 after the penalty. 6 x (1d6-3, min 1) is going to average 1.5 HP per HD, or around 9 HP. That is very slightly tougher than the average commoner, but it's less tough than the average warrior - it's still well within explainable boundaries. Meanwhile, somebody who is a lvl 6 badass


It also distorts the players hand book description of the level of skill required. It suggests that Einstein might only have had knowledge (physics) 15 because DC25 checks are required for questions that are "among the hardest physics questions known to man.". Wheras the players hand book describes DC 20 to 30 as only being "really tough". I'd expect Einstein to routinily know tough physics questions. Indeed he was able to answer several questions that no physicist that had come before him had been able to.

It then goes on to discuss blacksmiths, but boosts their skill points by relying on the skill focus feat and intelligence bonus. I suspect most real world blacksmiths did not do the real world of burning a feat, or routinely have intelligence bonuses.

I think a lot of the article stems from assuming that past a certain level of HP, D&D people stop being realistic. And so they set out to see if low-level people could pull of realistic levels of skill, and they can: a lvl 2 blacksmith who's focused on their craft can be perfectly good at it, and a lvl 6 blacksmith can pull of impressive works of art quickly; a lvl 2 expert can have pretty solid knowledge of quite a few things and maybe even develop a thesis on something nobody else really thinks about, and lvl 6 expert can easily answer thesis-worthy questions and further the field as a whole beyond what any of his so-called peers could accomplish without him.

Personally, I think most people are going to be lvl 1-2, with each level after being much rarer than the last, until the most successful people ever top out at lvl 6 (or the equivalent to lvl 6, anyway). Additionally, you're almost certainly in the minority here: the reason I'm even capable of arguing this point is because the article and it's conclusions are so widely well-received that an entire game mode has spawned around them for allowing more realistic games to occur.


Overall I think a big part of the problem is that DnD does not model real world people very well (again why we are not using a rule based analysis here). If we were forced to do so, i'd agree that ordinary people are not high level. Even elite people like world leader sucurity would not be very high level (above level 10), but I think they'd be higher level than your estimate.

That being said, I appreciate having an actual statement from you: you don't think even the best of the best are going to be above level 10.


The open source document you linked says "The creature is effectively camouflaged as a creature of its new form". I don't read that as saying the succubus is identical to its new form.

Literally the part I quoted at you says it "has the ability to assume the appearance of a specific creature". You yourself brought up that appearance isn't everything, and that mannerisms can also give away a disguise. Looking exactly like the person by having their appearance doesn't make the disguise perfect, since they don't necessarily walk the walk or talk the talk. Observation with Listen/Spot/Detect Thoughts can help with selling the disguise, but at the end of the day it's Spot vs Disguise. Succubus is at +27. Under my assumption, world security will generally top out at lvl 5 (although some will be so amazing as to be lvl 6); still, most world leaders won't have a legend on hand, and even if you're of the impression the article is wrong, and the cap is actually lvl 10, lvl 5 is still a good assumption for the best security in the world nuke-capable country. 8 ranks, maybe +2 from wis for a good array, maybe +2 from feat (if I were building an all-around bodyguard, I'd probably go for the +2/+2 feat instead of skill focus). Anyway, let's call it +13 normally, and so +19 after the familiarity bonus.

A lvl 10 master of disguise still isn't magic, so he's gonna be rocking maybe a +20 after everything is said and done; +20 vs +19 is child's play. Have enough guards, and one of them is guaranteed to succeed...and honestly, a majority of them probably will. But the succubus' disguise is magic. +27 is a hell of a lot harder to overcome. It's about a 1 in 5 chance for the Spot check to succeed. Now put yourself in that situation: the president (or whoever) emerges. Four of his bodyguards are like "seems legit", but the fifth one screams "that's not the president" and draws his gun. Who's getting tackled to the ground in that scenario? The president? Probably not. Thankfully, after a short conversation with the president, the dissenting guard will understand the perfectly reasonable explanation for whatever discrepancy he noticed.

(Needless to say, this gets even worse against a lilitu - the extra ten points make them just as difficult to catch even without a magic disguise, and if they're using a magic disguise, the odds have dropped to about 3 in 400.)


So get frustrated with me if you like, but I don't accept that on the basis of the spells description that an ocular scanner (or a fingerprint detector of the type all phones have) would be fooled. The succubus does not become the person, they are only camoflaged as them. Not a case of me trying to twist magic so it doesn't work as described, just me not assuming that magic naturally overcomes everything.

I can at least admit that the spell doesn't explicitly say that their forms are 100% identical. It implies you can take the form of a specific other creature, but I guess that's not quite the same thing.


We are in the realm of guessing here, but common sense dictates that wouldn't fully check the world leader every time he comes out of the bathroom. Common sense dictates they would check him every time he tries to launch a nuclear strike (or command someone to do so) though.

They're not checking for people disguised as the president though. A cursory glance determines that, as far as they're concerned. They're not whipping out fingerprint scanners, they're checking passwords.


Oops is right unless you intended to make my point. the description says it only detects surface thoughts, not passcodes and the like. It also makes the point that if the world leader's intelligence is over 26 (which is not out of the question for a world leader) the Succubus might be stunned.

You can't seriously tell me you've never heard about the "don't think of purple elephants" phenomenon. "Only reads surface thoughts" is not nearly the limitation you think it is.

Additionally, with the limitation you've put on the level equivalent of IRL people, Int 26 is impossible. Max roll of 18, no bonus from race, +3 from age at most, and +2 from HD at most. That's a maximum Int for IRL people of 22 (under my assumed level cap) or 23 (under your assumed level cap). No stunning for you.


Your point about repeated attempts is a good one though. If a failed attempt is made, does the subject realise it do you think.

It's especially a good point when Aristocrat 16s are no longer on the table even in your version of things.

I'm actually unsure what the rules say regarding failed attempts. This is partly because whatever the rule may be, I've played with lots of DMs that ignore it and make their own ruling, because I've played with lots of DMs that rule it both ways. I'm having trouble even researching what the rule would be. It's possible that there's no indication anything happened. It's possible that the target feels something happen in their brain, and that D&D people understand a [Mind-Affecting] thing just occurred, but maybe IRL people would lack the context to understand what that tingling was. It's possible that a failed [Mind-Affecting] attempt is universally recognizable - maybe the president wouldn't know that a mind control thing was attempted, but whatever just happened tried to do something to his brain or mind that is very very wrong. At this juncture it'd be pure speculation on both our parts, I think.


Anyway, I had a quick look at the spell description and it did say that suggesting "some obviously harmful act automatically negates the effect of the spell". A world leader would know better than anyone (certainly better than the Succubus) that a nuclear launch would lead to MAD

You should really read the whole thing; the next sentence makes it obvious how to proceed. Suggesting to the president "you should push the button and speak the password that launches all the nukes" would almost certainly fall under "obviously harmful". But we don't have to suggest that:


Asking the creature to stab itself, throw itself onto a spear, immolate itself, or do some other obviously harmful act automatically negates the effect of the spell. However, a suggestion that a pool of acid is actually pure water and that a quick dip would be refreshing is another matter.

Suggesting "this man needs to check that you still remember the nuclear passwords". "checking that you remember a password" is not an unreasonable, inherently harmful suggestion.


I used the term "world leader" rather than 'president' deliberately because I suspect it would be true in most (if not all) nuclear countries. But, other than the US, I think it is probably speculation on both of our parts - we don't know. And I am reluctant to speculate because of the no-politics rules.

I think that because of how money and power are intertwined in our world, the US's economic advantages (at least when it comes to military matters) is going to make the US nuclear arsenal much harder to access than that of a poorer country that's more of a dictatorship. You're correct that I can't even begin to speculate on how much or what kind of security they've got defending their nukes, but I'm willing to bet that there are nations out there where the security preventing the leader from launching the nukes if he wants to launch the nukes is much less stringent, just on a "dont tell me what to do I'm the dictator here" level of things.


I'm not sure that it only requires one country though. I think it might require only one of the big powers with a large stockpile of nukes. But I think that some countries only have sufficient nukes (or their nukes are limited by delivery systems) such that the wouldn't do much damage. If country A launches a small number of nukes and country b, country B responds, I don't think country C would necessarily launch. They can calculate trajectory as soon as the nuke begins its ballistic trajectory.

They can check trajectory as soon as they're aware of it, which as pointed out earlier they might not be immediately aware of the launch. Things happen in secret sometimes, even if the secrecy only lasts 15 minutes.

A bit more importantly, though, it only takes one nuke to be a threat to "the nation" - which here can be read as "the nation's leadership". If a nuke was launched at washington DC while congress was in session and the president wasn't off playing golf somewhere...sure, maybe the nation that launched that nuke doesn't have a second nuke to launch at anybody. But is the US president really going to assume that a nation with no back-up nukes just shot the US without a greater plan? Or is this the first shot to take out all the people who can authorize nuke launches, leaving that small nation's allies to start nuking the rest of the US without any threat? That decision has to be made before the nuke arrives at DC. And because the succubus wasn't part of whatever intelligence briefings they had previously, this attack really is going to be unexpected.

Succubus nukes DC, DC nukes whoever they assume is really behind the nuking (which is to say, another nuke-capable nation), that nation fires off their nukes, and now the whole planet is one fire.

It's not that hard.


I think because I am approaching it from a different perspective. You, I suspect, are approaching it from a game perspective with the succubus as the protagonist, where a daring plan using all your unique skills is exactly the sort of thing that will succeed. I am approaching it from a more realistic perspective where, even thought the Succubus's skills make the sort of thing you are proposing possible, there are still many things that can go wrong for it. Your super-infiltrator is opposed by systems that are designed to be the ultimate in avoiding infiltration. Each has advantages (tech and magic) that the other wouldn't necessarily be aware of (although they may depending on whether its the first attempt or not). You may be right that the odds are in the Succubus favour, but I don't agree that it's a guarantee, and I certainly don't agree with the original implication that it would be simple.

I'm approaching it from the point of view that politicians are not level 16 and bodyguards are level 20, the way your initial response made them out to be. I'm looking at what a realistic level of skill and paranoia is for IRL people, particularly when they have no knowledge of the magical possibilities, and then extrapolating from there based on how the skills and abilities of the succubus compares. Like...if a bodyguard patrolling lucks upon the succubus, and takes a couple shots before she teleports away in front of him...is he gonna assume "holy **** magic is real", or is he gonna assume he's losing his mind from the stress? Either way, he probably reports it in, because better safe than sorry, and the other people who hear that report will be slightly more ready for somebody to teleport in...but they're probably not that much more ready. They're probably going to assume he was jumping at shadows and is a bit touched in the head.

"Unrealistic levels of skill" are only unrealistic because they're beyond what IRL people could ever hope to accomplish. The succubus is a bit better skill-wise than the best-in-history master of infiltration, from my point of view, and its SLAs help support that fact. It's not particularly strong by D&D standards, but it's strong by IRL standards, as far as "single person tries to get the whole planet to nuke itself" goals go. I can admit that it's not guaranteed, but I think the succubus has a much better chance than you're giving it credit for...and that things get even worse if a more specialized infiltrator is sent to do the job.


I didn't mention proof at all. Proof is not the standard for almost anything we are talking about here. Obviously neither of us can prove a thing about the interaction of the elements of DnD and the real world.

I was being a bit facetious, but to go into a bit more detail: you're making the baseless supposition that, when presented with a model that does not align with any explanation within our understanding of physics, we'll have tools to deal with ghosts in short order. We're basically starting completely from scratch in a completely unheard of field of study. Radiation was properly detected/discovered/named in the 1890s. It took another 40 years for us to have actual attempts at weaponizing it. Dark Matter (some kind of matter that is basically only affected/detectable by gravity) was discovered in the 1930s, and we still don't really have any idea how to leverage it. We could maybe theorize that Dark Matter is similar to how ghosts work, but finding out that ghosts are real and made of dark matter doesn't make dark matter any easier to research or weaponize or capture.


To hark back to rules, they can beat the Succubus' diplomacy check without even breaking your articles' suggestion that people not exceed level 6. The Succubus doesn't even have sense motive as a listed skill, which is outrageous for something you described as the ultimate infiltrator.

The lack of ranks in diplomacy and sense motive makes it a terrible diplomat but are largely irrelevant to infiltration. The ranks in bluff and disguise make it a good infiltrator. Lilitu solves both these problems, and I'm not even insisting that Lilitu is the "ultimate infiltrator", let alone succubus. It's a demon that's designed for it, and is really really good at that task. Being "bad at diplomacy" doesn't matter because diplomacy isn't opposed in the first place, it's against a flat DC; that they could beat her check with their own isn't relevant to her success against them, it only matters if they're trying to improve her feelings about them...and they don't necessarily realize they're dealing with somebody who needs to be persuaded, since succubus is disguised.



I admit that I hadn't realised the polymorph spell (or change self using the open source rules) modifier stacked with the Succubus's disguise check - leading to +27. I'd guess the security for world leaders is +12 or so, plus an additional 6 or so for being familiar with the world leader.

If the succubus takes 10, the spot check would have to exceed 37. If my guesses for security is right, they notice the Succubus on a roll of 19 or more (so 10% of the time). The Succubus would have to pass several security each time though. We might be looking at 5 or 6 rolls, each with a 10% chance of succeeding. The odds then would be somewhat in the Succubus' favour if it tried to inflitrate once, but against if it tried to infiltrate more than once.

I've addressed this, although in mine I assumed the succubus was rolling instead of taking 10. That makes the odds worse for the succubus but I think it's fair - I'm not sure why you think she can take 10? More importantly though, failing a single time doesn't mean being caught by everybody, just by one person...and everybody else thinks that person is wrong. Whether its 4v1 in my example or 9v1 in yours is arbitrary.




Neither I nor the article suggested that DC 30 is impossible for humans to achieve. You're thinking of 5e. DC 30 is hard to hit, but not impossible, and the article even gives examples of people doing it. High jump record is ~8 ft, so DC 32, so requires a +12 to hit. Str +4, Skill Focus +3, and 5 ranks. That's lvl 2. It's a very focused level 2, but it's still level 2. If you assume olympians aren't all massive-muscled like that, and Str 14 is a more fair assumption, we could raise to lvl 4 - which is about an appropriate level for an olympic athlete anyway. If what we want is somebody who can get close to the record reliably (taking 10), we're looking for something close to +20? 9 ranks, 4 Str, 3 skill focus, 2 acrobatic, and we're already at +18. This is reasonable for "best in history, who specializes at this thing" - even if you complain that not every blacksmith will have skill focus, surely you won't complain about olympic athletes having it.

As far as manacles and locks go, you're assuming that the top quality in D&D is equal to the top quality in medieval. This feels like a very strange assumption, personally. Like, probably one of the most fundamental aspects of basically every fantasy story is the ubiquitous blacksmiths who can forge wonders with ease. Dwarves are everywhere, and they're making stuff, and it's dwarf quality stuff. And they're only a little bit better than humans. I'm not saying that IRL people haven't successfully picked the best locks medieval people could craft, I just dispute that this means those locks were equivalent to D&D's amazing-quality-locks. This is part of why physical skills are a better approach: it's hard to say how the quality of items compares between worlds, but we can at least agree on what a foot of jump height is.

[quote]Yep, the hyperbolic exaggeration again. Real world world leaders are very skilled at persuading and resisting persuasion is all I said.

The quote was "aristocrat 16". That was your baseline assumption for the world leaders - not "best ever", just what you expected to see. It's actual insanity.

[Liquor Box]

Since when does Elminster count as a villain?


He's not a villain though.

But Szass Tam, Larloch, Fzoul Chembryl, Strahd, Tasha, Iuz, Manshoon (any of him), or whoever else- yeah, go nuts.

Witchcraft is still a crime in \some parts of the world.

No famous villains came to mind, so I was more just using him as an example of a famous fictional character, and wonder if he was sufficiently fleshed out to discuss his ability against the real world. He isn't (due to the lack of spell list), and I wonder if any well known DnD villain is. It may that gods like Vecna are so powerful that it's clear they'd prevail even without full details of their powers.

Strahd is stated out, so might be a good one to discuss though. I suspect he'd struggle, but I'll have a closer look at him later.


I'm not wrong.

My approach has us using the rules of 3.5 as they currently exist, seeing how the real world fits into that framework, and extrapolating the results from that understanding.

Your approach acknowledges that we maybe don't understand reality, and then insists that we should toss out the reality-framework we do understand, and that step one of any discussion that looks like this should be "rework all of D&D to make it more in line with reality, and then answer the question the OP asked". Your approach is to see the question "how does [D&D thing] interact with IRL" and to mentally translate that as "how does my version of [D&D thing] homebrewed to be different from normal interact with IRL". Any discussion using your approach is going to be 99% people arguing about which homebrewed version of the D&D thing we should be using.

Your approach is worthless for any meaningful discussion of the question. It is ignoring the actual premise and substituting your own.

We have two competing frameworks - the way things work in the real world, and the way things work in DnD. Neither accounts for things that exist in the other satisfactorily.

You are wrong that there is only one way to approach this. There are several:

Your preferred way of going about this analysis is look at the real world through the lens of DnD, which if taken to its extreme would provide instant "I win" buttons for the DnD villain (like incorporeality if interpreted the way you say it should be).
The opposite would be to look at DnD through the lens of the real world, which if taken to its extreme would provide instant "I win" buttons for the real world (like the probable non-existence of magic).
There is a whole spectrum of ways to analyse the situation which fall between these extremes.


In my opinion the third is the only sensible way of analysing things because the compare the abilities of the creatures on both world, rather than simply ruling that one system (or reality) trumps the other. The only sensible place on the spectrum is to seek to intermesh the real world with DnD. It seems to me that your objection to this is that it has ambiguity and relies on judgment calls being made, rather than the simply application of a series of rules. That may be, but fortunately in this case we have an OP to stand in the for DM and make those calls. Several have been made already.

This is largely redundent now. You said that my premise is ignoring the actual premise and substituting my own. On the contrary, the OP, who sets the premise, has explicitly said that things work as they do in real life, but that DnD abilities (like magic) would still function as they should. He even made the point explicitly with respect to the example of guns. So it is you who is ignoring the premise and substituting your own.


Good to see you're still ignoring the point: the point was that guns are not a thing that automatically, magically kills whatever you point them at.

Oh I see, you understood the point and just wanted to disagree.

You'll find in most places where I disagree with you, I did understand your point.

In this case I specifically wanted to disagree with your hyperbolic mimicry of what I had said.


Stop right there. You are literally missing the forest for the trees right now. The point of that whole argument is not that I can't think of things that are tougher than steel. Tungsten, for example. The point I'm making is that if I were to ask you "what's the effective hardness of tungsten", you would have no answer, because Tungsten doesn't have a write-up in D&D. If we wanted to get an idea of just how tough DR 20 is, we'd need to figure out a way to directly compare a real-life measurement of "toughness" to D&D's hardness. We've got the hardness for a number of real-world materials, but real-world materials are not actually as simple as the D&D versions. I can't just be like you, making baseless statements pulled from my ass. If I wanna say "dragon scales are as tough as tungsten", I have to show my work. That's why I say that I don't know what material would even be appropriate for comparison, instead of saying that no such material exists.

OK, we have several substances that are tougher (in the sense of bullet resistance) than iron - steel, tungsten, kevlar and depleted uranium. We can quantify this:

Kevlar is five times stronger than steel on an equal weight basis and provides reliable performance and solid strength
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-makes-kevlar-so-stro/#:~:text=Kevlar%20is%20five%20times%20stronger,rel iable%20performance%20and%20solid%20strength.

And steel is stronger than iron. That suggests that Kevlar is has much more 'hardness' (as in resistance to bullet damage) than hardness 20. And AP bullets were designed to penetrate kevlar.


The point I was making was, if we approach things from that angle, it involves a metric ton of busywork that's not relevant to 99% of the discussion, so that we can make a guess at precisely how easy it is for guns to pierce dragon scales, and thus make a guess at precisely how much damage IRL guns actually deal. Instead of using the existing attack/damage/NA/HP/DR/gun rules to approximate.


If this were true, it would still be preferable to applying a framework which we know is clearly wrong.

But as shown above, it is not true. We could estimate kevlar as hardness 50, given that it is five times stronger than steel, which itself stronger than iron. but in my view that add a degree of false precision. Instead we can simply conclude that AP bullets are capable of penetrating things much stronger than iron, like both dragon scales and kevlar are.


The rules system gives us an idea of how resistant dragons are supposed to be to guns. The relative attack power of a gun vs the relative defense power of a dragon is well-established within the system. You are well within your rights to say that the guns presented in the DMG aren't a great reflection of IRL guns; you are fully allowed to have opinions. But saying "and that's why guns should be much more powerful but dragons shouldn't be", and then using your homebrewed "more powerful guns" to prove that dragons are actually very weak against guns, is not really an argument that's going to convince me. All you're demonstrating is that if you make guns much stronger against dragons than they are by default in the system, then dragons are really weak.

The problem with this argument is that I am not saying DnD underpowers guns relative to dragons. I am saying it underpowers them relative to other weapons and vastly so. This is clearest in the context of easily objectively measured points, like number of shots per 10 seconds.


It's worth mentioning that part of the reason for the whale vs dragon comparison was to point out that whales don't actually have DR - they have HP and NA, but no DR, whereas dragons have all three. Whales do not have an invisible force field that deflects attacks away from them, they just have a thick layer of blubber that makes most attacks sent their way fail to actually hurt.

I doubt you'll look up the figures later, but hey maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. Of course, I severely doubt you'll actually put in the work to conclusively prove something like "tank armor is right around as tough as dragon scales should be".

I already did the work to check the figures for kevlar, and demonstrated that, based on its relative resistance to damage compared to iron, it was much much tougher than dragon scales. Tank armour is far far stronger.

As for whales, you made the analogy, not me. It's not my fault that the analogy worked against you. Well... I suppose it kind of is my fault actually.


"D&D doesn't simulate literally every IRL thing and that's why it's useless for this discussion."

And that's not strawmanning. It is a very light paraphrasing of that last sentence.

No, it is strawmanning. If it wasn't, you wouldn;t have felt the need to paraphrase at all.

The main shortfall of your 'paraphrase' was that I was not saying DnD failes to simulate every real life thing. I was saying that in some places (with auto weapons being the example) DnD does seek to simulate real world things and does so very poorly.

I can only speculate as to why. It may be that because DnD was created to be a system around medieval high fantasy, they preferred not to give primacy (at least as far as mundane combat goes) to modern weapons. Or maybe they did their best, and just did it poorly.


Oh wow, so a whale that's been injured and immobilized by multiple siege engine weapons can have an enormous rifle placed directly against its spine causing it to die to a single bullet? If only D&D had mechanics for simulating that. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm#coupdeGrace)

Using "pointing a gun directly into the spine of a helpless enemy" and claiming it means that the other link (where people point out that most guns have a difficult time getting through the blubber) are wrong, I'm not really sure how to even argue. Anything I could say feels so insanely obvious that I feel pointing it out to you would be inherently insulting to your intelligence.

There were no seige weapons - the harpoons were thrown. The whale was not helpless, although the harpoons did restrict its movement. The rifle was not huge (.46 calibre is only slightly higher than the famous .45 magnum handgun) and it was not placed directly against the whale's skull but fired at a slightly submerged whale from several meters away.

I don't think you are accurately reflecting the words of the study, but there is a video accompanying the article (warning, I didn't find it a very pleasant watch) if there was any doubt as to what was insanely obvious.


What even is this question? I made my joke, you ate the onion, I then explained the onion, and then you asked me to explain it? Maybe go try reading the explanation again? Or clarify what you're even asking here.

You made a joke? I must have missed it. It was not what I was referring to as as being subtle. Either way, I doubt we can take this much further.


IRL has no framework in which we can even approximate ghosts. If you were to try and explain ghosts using only IRL physics, you couldn't. If you were to try and explain nukes using D&D rules, it's insanely easy. It's an AoE dealing fire damage (for the heat) and bludgeoning damage (for the shockwave), and has an aftereffect where the affected area forces saves vs disease (specifically, radiation sickness) for awhile. maybe poison if it's still pretty early on, since radiation that's less faded can act a lot quicker. But still, it's not hard to simulate a nuke in D&D terms unless you're deliberately pretending it is. Since one system has ghost rules and has rules that can simulate nukes well enough, while the other system has nuke rules but no ghost rules at all, the system with rules for both should take precedent on how they interact. And unless you wish to insist that a nuclear explosion is inherently magical...

You have endeavoured to reflect the effects of a nuclear blast on people. How would you model the effect of gamma rays (similar toan xray but with higher photon energy) on the ethereal plane? You could model it by saying it has none. Or you could model it by saying it extends to that plane.

Each would be equally valid - equally consistent with the rules of DnD and the rules of earth. Because gamma rays and the ethereal plane don't interact either the real world or Dnd (because only one exists in each).

Or you could absolutely go the other way and simulate ghosts in the real world. It would require introducing some new rules, as it did to put nukes in DnD.

However you spin it, either involves introducing something new to the other. And each has elements which could interact with the other in different ways.


You are incorrect. It is not "unlike any physical or energy effect from D&D". There exist plenty of mechanics that do a good enough job of simulating it. In the same section of the DMG that has guns, they also have dynamite. You might be aware of this, but nuclear bombs generally are measured in kilotons or megatons. This is not a measurement of the weight of the bomb itself, but rather of the weight of a pile of dynamite that could achieve a similar explosion. This is one of those "I almost feel like I'm insulting you by saying it out loud" statements, but...dynamite and nuclear bombs work pretty similarly. The nukes have this gnarly after-effect, sure, but the initial explosion is...just a big explosion.

You are correct that dynamite is used as a metric for the energy released by a nuke. But if nukes were just really big explosions we wouldn't be having this discussion. I'd agree with you. It's the elements like gamma rays and neutrons which I think DnD doesn't simulate

The only way I'd be insulted by you saying "dynamite and nuclear bombs work pretty similarly", is it you expected me to believe it. :smalltongue:


It's how your argument comes across.

Only to you based on most of the discussions I've had in the thread.


The point of my post is that strength is relative. Is a shadow stronger than a dragon? Obviously not. But we can't can't beat a shadow. The best argument we've got for beating a shadow is that the shadow wouldn't immediately kill us without direction from a more intelligent entity, and theoretically sometime in the next decade humanity could maybe develop ghostbuster technology straight out of fiction. How widespread shadows in general are at that point is anybody's guess. "What's the strongest enemy that humanity could beat" is a weird question to answer.

It's not my fault the system makes ghosts basically impossible to deal with if you don't have magic.

I love the fact that you keep talking about ghostbusters being "straight out of fiction" as if fictional things had no place in a scenario where we are talking about shadows.


The scenario is not about proposing a fair fight. The OP laying out the situation did not say "the villain makes a press conference to the whole world explaining their presence, their capabilities, and their limitations, and then challenged the world to see if they could overcome the villain". I don't know why you think it is. I don't know why at one second you are insisting shadows are too dumb to play tactically, and then insisting that a high-level wizard should be played in as straightforward a manner as any brute monster. A wizard with the intelligence necessary to puzzle out magic's deepest secrets is not, in fact, going to just rush an army of gun-wielding thugs on the assumption that he could 100% win a fair fight. Maybe he believes he could anyway, but it's still pretty stupid to try.

A villain whose presence is unknown to us is a villain we can't defeat. A villain whose location is unknown to us is a villain we can't defeat. A villain we can't touch is a villain we can't defeat. A villain we can't meaningfully hurt is a villain we can't defeat. A villain we can't kill is a villain we can't defeat. A villain who won't stay dead is a villain we can't defeat.

Well the villain was immediately aware of us and that it wanted to defeat us (and somehow found a way here), so I didn't think it unreasonable that we would know about it. But the OP has now clarified, that the villain arrives here without us knowing - as you say in your last paragraph, a significant advantage to the villain as long as it lasts.

As for the stuff about wizards charging people with guns - I have said nothing of the sort.


Leadership is a thing. And anyway, just because the villain is invading our world on his own doesn't mean he doesn't have friends back home that can bring him back from the dead if need be.

The it wouldn't be a villain - it would be several. And if they are back home, how would the villain get back to them?


Just because the English language is unknown to Elminster does not mean the English language is unknown to the gods or to the Weave. It's already established that some version of Earth exists within the D&D multiverse - and that means its languages are known to the forces that bind the universe together.

Some version, but not the version which exists in the real world. As the OP has said, we are using real world rules, and if so we are not using the version of earth which exists in DnD.


Being venerable, he would have -6 Con after everything else. It is unlikely he was particularly tough for a human being, so we can estimate his Con at 6 after the penalty. 6 x (1d6-3, min 1) is going to average 1.5 HP per HD, or around 9 HP. That is very slightly tougher than the average commoner, but it's less tough than the average warrior - it's still well within explainable boundaries. Meanwhile, somebody who is a lvl 6 badass

Einstein was already making ground breaking discoveries in physcis in 1905, at the age of 26. So I don't think that venerability can explain away his presumably ordinary resistance to damage.


I think a lot of the article stems from assuming that past a certain level of HP, D&D people stop being realistic. And so they set out to see if low-level people could pull of realistic levels of skill, and they can: a lvl 2 blacksmith who's focused on their craft can be perfectly good at it, and a lvl 6 blacksmith can pull of impressive works of art quickly; a lvl 2 expert can have pretty solid knowledge of quite a few things and maybe even develop a thesis on something nobody else really thinks about, and lvl 6 expert can easily answer thesis-worthy questions and further the field as a whole beyond what any of his so-called peers could accomplish without him.

I agree that the article is coming from the assumption that people over lvl 6 would have so many hit points to be superhuman. But that is because DnDs modelling of hitpoints is also unrealistic. Hit points are needed to create a better game, where party members are not regularly one-shotted, but they are not realistic.

Simply put, however you spin it, in DND hit points and skills will correlate because both increase with levels. In the real world they are independent of one another. That can't be explained away by making real world humans low level.


Personally, I think most people are going to be lvl 1-2, with each level after being much rarer than the last, until the most successful people ever top out at lvl 6 (or the equivalent to lvl 6, anyway). Additionally, you're almost certainly in the minority here: the reason I'm even capable of arguing this point is because the article and it's conclusions are so widely well-received that an entire game mode has spawned around them for allowing more realistic games to occur.

What do you mean that a game has spawned around the article? DnD pre-existed the article, and its popularity is not attributable to the article.


That being said, I appreciate having an actual statement from you: you don't think even the best of the best are going to be above level 10.

What I said was elites like world leader security would not be likely to be higher than level 10.

The problem with my statement, as with any statement about the level of real world humans, is that levels are not a mechanic that can be well applied to the real world. Secret Service agents are highly skilled, and those skills might equate to someone of level 10, but obviously they cannot take the equivalent of 50 or 60 hp damage Their experience and training has allowed their skills to grow, but not their hit points.


Literally the part I quoted at you says it "has the ability to assume the appearance of a specific creature". You yourself brought up that appearance isn't everything, and that mannerisms can also give away a disguise. Looking exactly like the person by having their appearance doesn't make the disguise perfect, since they don't necessarily walk the walk or talk the talk. Observation with Listen/Spot/Detect Thoughts can help with selling the disguise, but at the end of the day it's Spot vs Disguise. Succubus is at +27. Under my assumption, world security will generally top out at lvl 5 (although some will be so amazing as to be lvl 6); still, most world leaders won't have a legend on hand, and even if you're of the impression the article is wrong, and the cap is actually lvl 10, lvl 5 is still a good assumption for the best security in the world nuke-capable country. 8 ranks, maybe +2 from wis for a good array, maybe +2 from feat (if I were building an all-around bodyguard, I'd probably go for the +2/+2 feat instead of skill focus). Anyway, let's call it +13 normally, and so +19 after the familiarity bonus.
A lvl 10 master of disguise still isn't magic, so he's gonna be rocking maybe a +20 after everything is said and done; +20 vs +19 is child's play. Have enough guards, and one of them is guaranteed to succeed...and honestly, a majority of them probably will. But the succubus' disguise is magic. +27 is a hell of a lot harder to overcome. It's about a 1 in 5 chance for the Spot check to succeed. Now put yourself in that situation: the president (or whoever) emerges. Four of his bodyguards are like "seems legit", but the fifth one screams "that's not the president" and draws his gun. Who's getting tackled to the ground in that scenario? The president? Probably not. Thankfully, after a short conversation with the president, the dissenting guard will understand the perfectly reasonable explanation for whatever discrepancy he noticed.


Hmmm, I thought I went through this exact exercise in the post you are quoting with very similar outcomes.

You say +13 (+19) for the security. My own estimate from my previous post was +12 (+18)

I think if the fifth one claimed that the person they saw was not the world leader, then they probably would use other methods to verify identity at that point (fingerprint etc).

I can agree though, that it might not (I'm not sure) work that way in every nuclear capable country in the world.


I can at least admit that the spell doesn't explicitly say that their forms are 100% identical. It implies you can take the form of a specific other creature, but I guess that's not quite the same thing.

I appreciate that.


They're not checking for people disguised as the president though. A cursory glance determines that, as far as they're concerned. They're not whipping out fingerprint scanners, they're checking passwords.
Well in America the nuclear launch protocol does include verifying their identity, although i don't think the method of that verification is publicly available. I think there are codes in addition.


You can't seriously tell me you've never heard about the "don't think of purple elephants" phenomenon. "Only reads surface thoughts" is not nearly the limitation you think it is.

Here it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic_process_theory

I don't know how it would apply to a passcode. If someone asked me to think of my bank pin, I don't think I'd immediately think of it. Instead I'd probably wonder why they wanted it.

It strikes me as something you'd have to get the DM to rule on (to apply a DnD perspective) or something that may or may not work (to apply a real world perspective).


Additionally, with the limitation you've put on the level equivalent of IRL people, Int 26 is impossible. Max roll of 18, no bonus from race, +3 from age at most, and +2 from HD at most. That's a maximum Int for IRL people of 22 (under my assumed level cap) or 23 (under your assumed level cap). No stunning for you.

I've already spoken about the folly of levels for the real world.

Intelligence is hard to measure, but strength is not. The heaviest weight lifted by a human was 6,270 pounds (by Paul Anderson). That would require a strength in the the 30s according to the lifting rules (a character may lift double his maximum weight off the ground). The heaviest overhead lift (580pds) would require str 23.

This again illustrates the problems in applying DnD rules to real world people. real world people are not limited to the deviation from the norm suggested by 3d6 - exceptional people can exceed it by a long way.

I've written up analysis of intelligence before (which is more complex than the simple str figures above), and I can repeat if you'd like to critique it. But the simple answer is that if you put your lvl 20 wizard in the real world, they probably wont be the smartest person going around.


I'm actually unsure what the rules say regarding failed attempts. This is partly because whatever the rule may be, I've played with lots of DMs that ignore it and make their own ruling, because I've played with lots of DMs that rule it both ways. I'm having trouble even researching what the rule would be. It's possible that there's no indication anything happened. It's possible that the target feels something happen in their brain, and that D&D people understand a [Mind-Affecting] thing just occurred, but maybe IRL people would lack the context to understand what that tingling was. It's possible that a failed [Mind-Affecting] attempt is universally recognizable - maybe the president wouldn't know that a mind control thing was attempted, but whatever just happened tried to do something to his brain or mind that is very very wrong. At this juncture it'd be pure speculation on both our parts, I think.

I don't know what the rules prescribe either. Which means, as you say, it would be a question for the DM in a game situation, and speculative of us both in this context.


You should really read the whole thing; the next sentence makes it obvious how to proceed. Suggesting to the president "you should push the button and speak the password that launches all the nukes" would almost certainly fall under "obviously harmful". But we don't have to suggest that:

I had read the whole thing. But, as I said to you, the world leader knows better than the succubus what launching the nukes would do. They're know very well that the pool is acid.

As I said to liquidformat on the same point, I'm sure people would have different ideas whether certain things a succubus might say sound reasonable (or it wouldn't be obvious to the world leader that they'd be harming themself). At the end of the day it would be another question for the DM. Or in the real world, something that may or may not succeed (before we take saves into account).


Suggesting "this man needs to check that you still remember the nuclear passwords". "checking that you remember a password" is not an unreasonable, inherently harmful suggestion

No, but how would that advance the succubus' goals?

Sorry, I don't think you ever set out step by step how you thought the succubus would go about its business. It would be helpful to do so, because I am making assumptions, and they are either wrong, or the succubus' approach is changing from post to post.


I think that because of how money and power are intertwined in our world, the US's economic advantages (at least when it comes to military matters) is going to make the US nuclear arsenal much harder to access than that of a poorer country that's more of a dictatorship. You're correct that I can't even begin to speculate on how much or what kind of security they've got defending their nukes, but I'm willing to bet that there are nations out there where the security preventing the leader from launching the nukes if he wants to launch the nukes is much less stringent, just on a "dont tell me what to do I'm the dictator here" level of things.

I agree with this. But as mentioned in my previous post (and address again below), the poorer countries with nukes probably do not have the delivery systems to threaten major powers, and would probably not be able launch a worldwide war. The big three or four would, I expect, have pretty stringent security, although perhaps not all to the level of the US.


They can check trajectory as soon as they're aware of it, which as pointed out earlier they might not be immediately aware of the launch. Things happen in secret sometimes, even if the secrecy only lasts 15 minutes.

A bit more importantly, though, it only takes one nuke to be a threat to "the nation" - which here can be read as "the nation's leadership". If a nuke was launched at washington DC while congress was in session and the president wasn't off playing golf somewhere...sure, maybe the nation that launched that nuke doesn't have a second nuke to launch at anybody. But is the US president really going to assume that a nation with no back-up nukes just shot the US without a greater plan? Or is this the first shot to take out all the people who can authorize nuke launches, leaving that small nation's allies to start nuking the rest of the US without any threat? That decision has to be made before the nuke arrives at DC. And because the succubus wasn't part of whatever intelligence briefings they had previously, this attack really is going to be unexpected.

Succubus nukes DC, DC nukes whoever they assume is really behind the nuking (which is to say, another nuke-capable nation), that nation fires off their nukes, and now the whole planet is one fire.

It's not that hard.

I'm not sure I completely understand you here. The point is that not every country with nukes has the capacity to Nuke USA. That is because they do not have intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach mainland USA. Two or three countries (plus USA itself) has that sort of capability, but not the rest.


I'm approaching it from the point of view that politicians are not level 16 and bodyguards are level 20, the way your initial response made them out to be. I'm looking at what a realistic level of skill and paranoia is for IRL people, particularly when they have no knowledge of the magical possibilities, and then extrapolating from there based on how the skills and abilities of the succubus compares. Like...if a bodyguard patrolling lucks upon the succubus, and takes a couple shots before she teleports away in front of him...is he gonna assume "holy **** magic is real", or is he gonna assume he's losing his mind from the stress? Either way, he probably reports it in, because better safe than sorry, and the other people who hear that report will be slightly more ready for somebody to teleport in...but they're probably not that much more ready. They're probably going to assume he was jumping at shadows and is a bit touched in the head.

"Unrealistic levels of skill" are only unrealistic because they're beyond what IRL people could ever hope to accomplish. The succubus is a bit better skill-wise than the best-in-history master of infiltration, from my point of view, and its SLAs help support that fact. It's not particularly strong by D&D standards, but it's strong by IRL standards, as far as "single person tries to get the whole planet to nuke itself" goals go. I can admit that it's not guaranteed, but I think the succubus has a much better chance than you're giving it credit for...and that things get even worse if a more specialized infiltrator is sent to do the job.

Ah, well I'm approaching it from the position that real world humans do not actually have levels at all. I am happy to continue to speculate as to their levels for the basis of comparing skills, but as I think skill is not related to hit points I am not prepared to constrain the levels based on the objection that no real world person has so many hit points.

Putting that aside, I don't disagree with this part of your analysis.

I agree, with the succubus it is possible but not guaranteed.


I was being a bit facetious, but to go into a bit more detail: you're making the baseless supposition that, when presented with a model that does not align with any explanation within our understanding of physics, we'll have tools to deal with ghosts in short order. We're basically starting completely from scratch in a completely unheard of field of study. Radiation was properly detected/discovered/named in the 1890s. It took another 40 years for us to have actual attempts at weaponizing it. Dark Matter (some kind of matter that is basically only affected/detectable by gravity) was discovered in the 1930s, and we still don't really have any idea how to leverage it. We could maybe theorize that Dark Matter is similar to how ghosts work, but finding out that ghosts are real and made of dark matter doesn't make dark matter any easier to research or weaponize or capture.

I was probably exaggerating to make my point when I said it was likely "a few weeks later".

If it was to suddenly turn out that there was an ethereal plane, we can only speculate how long it would take to come up with ways to interact with it. we don't know how hard it would be. To repeat my point from before (which you disagree with) we don't know whether things already control can interact with it.

You point out that it took a long time to deal with radiation and we still don't know how to deal with dark matter. This is true, but it took a very long time to some up with a vaccine for smallpox, and we still do not have one for HIV. But it took less than a year to come up with one for covid. I understand that the covid vaccine was not a new field, but the the vaccine was discovered quickly because of the vast resources thrown at it.

In the situation we are discussing, I imagine that research into the ethereal plane would be hugely resourced. How quickly we'd get solutions would depend on how hard solutions are (which we cannot know). But I think it would probably take longer than a few weeks (unless we already have the solution, as previously discussed).


The lack of ranks in diplomacy and sense motive makes it a terrible diplomat but are largely irrelevant to infiltration. The ranks in bluff and disguise make it a good infiltrator. Lilitu solves both these problems, and I'm not even insisting that Lilitu is the "ultimate infiltrator", let alone succubus. It's a demon that's designed for it, and is really really good at that task. Being "bad at diplomacy" doesn't matter because diplomacy isn't opposed in the first place, it's against a flat DC; that they could beat her check with their own isn't relevant to her success against them, it only matters if they're trying to improve her feelings about them...and they don't necessarily realize they're dealing with somebody who needs to be persuaded, since succubus is disguised

Well you did say the Succubus was "designed by Satan to be the ultimate in infiltration".

Diplomacy is opposed by dimplomacy in negotiations, but I get that's not what you're talking about.


Neither I nor the article suggested that DC 30 is impossible for humans to achieve. You're thinking of 5e. DC 30 is hard to hit, but not impossible, and the article even gives examples of people doing it. High jump record is ~8 ft, so DC 32, so requires a +12 to hit. Str +4, Skill Focus +3, and 5 ranks. That's lvl 2. It's a very focused level 2, but it's still level 2. If you assume olympians aren't all massive-muscled like that, and Str 14 is a more fair assumption, we could raise to lvl 4 - which is about an appropriate level for an olympic athlete anyway. If what we want is somebody who can get close to the record reliably (taking 10), we're looking for something close to +20? 9 ranks, 4 Str, 3 skill focus, 2 acrobatic, and we're already at +18. This is reasonable for "best in history, who specializes at this thing" - even if you complain that not every blacksmith will have skill focus, surely you won't complain about olympic athletes having it.[/quiote]

No, but when I claimed people would be able to spot the Succubus, you said I was claiming them to be superhuman (unless you were referring to something else I had said?).

You are right about high jump. I read it as 8 1/4 feet, which it is actually 8ft and 1/4 inch. That means it reasonable to round it down to 8 feet.

[quuote]As far as manacles and locks go, you're assuming that the top quality in D&D is equal to the top quality in medieval. This feels like a very strange assumption, personally. Like, probably one of the most fundamental aspects of basically every fantasy story is the ubiquitous blacksmiths who can forge wonders with ease. Dwarves are everywhere, and they're making stuff, and it's dwarf quality stuff. And they're only a little bit better than humans. I'm not saying that IRL people haven't successfully picked the best locks medieval people could craft, I just dispute that this means those locks were equivalent to D&D's amazing-quality-locks. This is part of why physical skills are a better approach: it's hard to say how the quality of items compares between worlds, but we can at least agree on what a foot of jump height is.

Well in the case of manacles, I am not assuming that the top qualities are the same. Only that humans were able to make masterwork manacles. The masterwork component only requires a DC20 craft check.

As for locks, a complex or superior lock is also DC20. Picking a good lock is DC30 and an amazing lock is DC40.


It seems that our main point of disagreement is the framework we use to analyse the scenario (and the particular hotpoints of guns and nukes). When we move past that, we are finding more common ground than disagreement. We agree the Succubus has a chance but is not a certainty.

[masamune1]

Witchcraft is still a crime in \some parts of the world.

No famous villains came to mind, so I was more just using him as an example of a famous fictional character, and wonder if he was sufficiently fleshed out to discuss his ability against the real world. He isn't (due to the lack of spell list), and I wonder if any well known DnD villain is. It may that gods like Vecna are so powerful that it's clear they'd prevail even without full details of their powers.

Strahd is stated out, so might be a good one to discuss though. I suspect he'd struggle, but I'll have a closer look at him later.

http://image.lundo.com/rpg/dnd/Books/Deities%20and%20Demigods.pdf

Vecna's stats and abilities are on page 95.

What gods can do in general and their ranks and limits etc starts on page 25.

[Melayl]

A person of average intelligence can't pick up a gun and start using it, and I think it would be even harder for a wight who doesn't know what one

Just had to interject this. Most people of average intelligence that have ever seen a gun used could pick one up and use it. They might not be a great shot, but they could use it.

[loky1109]

Just had to interject this. Most people of average intelligence that have ever seen a gun used could pick one up and use it. They might not be a great shot, but they could use it.
Not every gun. And there are big differences between take a gun ready to use and not charged gun.
Shooting isn't all of using guns. It's small part.

[Liquor Box]

Just had to interject this. Most people of average intelligence that have ever seen a gun used could pick one up and use it. They might not be a great shot, but they could use it.

They may know to pull the trigger from merely seeing one used, but would they know how to unlock the safety, or reload it?

[Scots Dragon]

A wight who was made from a modern-day person might well know how to use guns, however. Especially if we're talking about law enforcement or military.

Undead are proficient with all simple weapons, and personal firearms are considered to effectively be simple enough weapons in a modern day context, requiring only the Personal Firearms Proficiency feat to use.

There are of course also contagious undead types that retain whatever skills and levels the individual had in life. In fact, the d20 Modern RPG turns ghouls into a template for instance, and such ghouls retain all of their initial skills and feats.

[Liquor Box]

http://image.lundo.com/rpg/dnd/Books/Deities%20and%20Demigods.pdf

Vecna's stats and abilities are on page 95.

What gods can do in general and their ranks and limits etc starts on page 25.

to be honest, I'd simply assumed that god would prevail.

[Melayl]

Not every gun. And there are big differences between take a gun ready to use and not charged gun.
Shooting isn't all of using guns. It's small part.


They may know to pull the trigger from merely seeing one used, but would they know how to unlock the safety, or reload it?

Most guns are designed to be simple to use. Spend 5-10 minutes examining/messing with one, and most people could figure one out. Particularly those who have seen them in use (in person or via movies/TV).

Sadly, they really aren't all that hard to figure out.

[Pezzo]

Undead are proficient with all simple weapons, and personal firearms are considered to effectively be simple enough weapons in a modern day context, requiring only the Personal Firearms Proficiency feat to use.


I agree with Melayl, that anybody should be able to use a gun just by seeing somebody else use one, guns are made to be easy to use and comfortable to handle, I think that's why crossbows are simple weapons and bows are not. Although you should learn how to arm and reload a pistol, in the DMG modern and futuristic weapons don't require proficiency to know that, which means a DnD villain on earth could know how to launch a ballistic missile with -4 penalty on the attack. Ruling you need to be trained in order to reload modern weapons, should still let you shoot if they are already ready to use, like a one use crossbow.



There are of course also contagious undead types that retain whatever skills and levels the individual had in life. In fact, the d20 Modern RPG turns ghouls into a template for instance, and such ghouls retain all of their initial skills and feats.

You could have those reload guns for the differently able undeads

[loky1109]

Most guns are designed to be simple to use. Spend 5-10 minutes examining/messing with one, and most people could figure one out. Particularly those who have seen them in use (in person or via movies/TV).

Sadly, they really aren't all that hard to figure out.
Not everybody even found trigger on P-90. An then found he easley can shoot himself.
If there is instructor, yeah, things become more easy, but if isn't options exist.

[icefractal]

My approach has us using the rules of 3.5 as they currently exist, seeing how the real world fits into that framework, and extrapolating the results from that understanding.

...

Your approach is worthless for any meaningful discussion of the question. It is ignoring the actual premise and substituting your own.Your approach isn't suitable for answering the question "What if our Earth faced a D&D villain?"

"D&D-ified Earth", aka Earth but suddenly converted to use the D&D rules as physics, is a significantly different place than the world we live in. It doesn't just change how we interact with a dragon, it changes how we interact with each-other, with existing animals, and even with inanimate objects.

And for that matter "just use the D&D rules for Earth" is not some simple answer. There are a ton of things that then need to be answered, starting with level distribution and how XP works. It matters a lot whether those soldiers trying to stop the dragon are 1st or 20th level! Then we'd get into the whole question of whether the stock D&D classes make any sense to use for a setting with completely different education and jobs. And so forth - you're basically talking about making an entire setting, like FR or Eberron, and all the decisions that go with that.


Good to see you're still ignoring the point: the point was that guns are not a thing that automatically, magically kills whatever you point them at.They're not, but they're also not pea-shooters that do less damage than a medieval crossbow.

We have several points of comparison for how deadly weapons are - all the statted RL animals, and even more conveniently, the rules for breaking objects. If you stat an "elephant gun" in a way that it's not effective against elephants (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elephant.htm), it's not statted properly. An inch of concrete takes 23 damage to punch through, +15 per additional inch, and we know what the penetration for modern weaponry is, so work from there. Natural Armor is trickier to model, but you can compare it to the amounts that animals and dinosaurs have, to get some idea.


Bottom line, if we want to see how our Earth would fare with a D&D villain entering it, we need to either:
A) Convert the world to D&D rules in a way that's consistent with demonstrated reality, so a non-trivial new setting creation with plenty of new rules needed.
B) Estimate how the villain would function in reality, to the extent that makes sense.

[Melayl]

Not everybody even found trigger on P-90.

Seriously? I'm no genius, and I found it in less than 30 seconds after looking at a picture of the gun. I can't be that much smarter than all of those people... Wow... it should be easy for people to use them, anyway...

[liquidformat]

Not everybody even found trigger on P-90. An then found he easley can shoot himself.
If there is instructor, yeah, things become more easy, but if isn't options exist.

That is why the statement was 'most' and not 'all'. Your average hand gun, rifle, and shotgun are very straightforward to load and shoot. It all depends on what guns we are talking about but yes a P-90 is rather odd.

Going back to Liquor Box and AvatarVecna about comparing real world vs d&d. As has already been said Starjammer has already stated that advanced technology can be considered magic and you should treat advanced technology as magic in some situations. With that in mind the question really is what should be used as a baseline for comparing advanced tech. Given that d&d is supposed to be medieval times plus magic then medieval tech should be our baseline.

Given that, sure a classical blunderbuss or flint lock could reasonable be considered nonmagical modern guns are well and far beyond such old weapons and seem like they should reasonably be considered 'magical' for d&d parity. similarly we have advanced enough technology to replicate quite a few spells, weaponized lasers seem like a good representation for something like the Searing Light spell for example.

Talking about nukes, radiation and so forth I think AvatarVecna is dumbing it down too much. Sure the destructive power of nuke is represented using dynamite but to simply say oh we have dynamite represented in source material and we can just extrapolate and add in a disease effect doesn't do justice to how a nuke and their radiation works. Honestly I am not sure if radiation sickness, genetic issues springing up from radiation, and in general congenital diseases should fall under the d&d disease and poison umbrellas. I actually lean towards a nuke being better represented by a disintegrate spell that works over a specific range with an EMP pulse and shockwave type attack that works over yet larger range, plus maybe a large modified stinking cloud/cloudkill that stays there for multiple years.

[loky1109]

That is why the statement was 'most' and not 'all'. Your average hand gun, rifle, and shotgun are very straightforward to load and shoot. It all depends on what guns we are talking about but yes a P-90 is rather odd.
Even if we talk about something more regular, like AK-47 or M-16 or Glock... Most part of my live I didn't know where are safety locks on this guns and how extract mag. And I definitely am not unique. If in my hands appears old SKS I most likely will be able shoot only once.

Plus... Gun isn't only about shooting. It also about safety. Not keep finger on the trigger, not aim on people if you don't want to shoot, not aim on yourself never, "guns are always loaded" and so on.
Doesn't matter can you shoot in enemy or not if you shoot yourself or ally before meet the enemy.

[Scots Dragon]

Even if we talk about something more regular, like AK-47 or M-16 or Glock... Most part of my live I didn't know where are safety locks on this guns and how extract mag. And I definitely am not unique.

Plus... Gun isn't only about shooting. It also about safety. Not keep finger on the trigger, not aim on people if you don't want to shoot, not aim on yourself never, "guns are always loaded" and so on.
Doesn't matter can you shoot in enemy or not if you shoot yourself or ally before meet the enemy.

Probably less of an issue to wights, who are in fact already dead and therefore by definition disposable.

[Pezzo]

Given that, sure a classical blunderbuss or flint lock could reasonable be considered nonmagical modern guns are well and far beyond such old weapons and seem like they should reasonably be considered 'magical' for d&d parity. similarly we have advanced enough technology to replicate quite a few spells, weaponized lasers seem like a good representation for something like the Searing Light spell for example.
I wouldn't consider firearms magical, lasers yes, in the DMG it is suggested that laser rifles be considered artifacts. But modern firearms follow the same principles as bows, propelling a physical projectile. Siege engines do the same, and do much more damage than a modern firearm, still they can be mundane. Special ammunition on the other hand, I could see that being considered magical, like uranium bullets, because a wizard seeing the effects could only describe it as magic.


Plus... Gun isn't only about shooting. It also about safety. Not keep finger on the trigger, not aim on people if you don't want to shoot, not aim on yourself never, "guns are always loaded" and so on.
Doesn't matter can you shoot in enemy or not if you shoot yourself or ally before meet the enemy.

Commoners know how to use a crossbow, it's THAT easy. Nobody is gonna shoot himself outside of DnD.

[Scots Dragon]

Special ammunition on the other hand, I could see that being considered magical, like uranium bullets, because a wizard seeing the effects could only describe it as magic.

Those would most likely be counted as special materials a la mithral, adamantine, etc.

[loky1109]

Commoners know how to use a crossbow, it's THAT easy.
Only some commoners. Commoner has ONE simple weapon pro.


Nobody is gonna shoot himself outside of DnD.
Nobody is gonna shoot himself in real live? Are you serious?

[Pezzo]

Only some commoners. Commoner has ONE simple weapon pro.
Oops :P


Nobody is gonna shoot himself in real live? Are you serious?
No, I meant the exact opposite, I apologize for my english

[loky1109]

No, I meant the exact opposite, I apologize for my english
I apologize, too, but I didn't understand your point.

[flat_footed]

The Fullmetal Mod: Thread locked for review.

[Pirate ninja]

Modly Roger

Thread reopened. Please ensure you engage with your fellow posters in a respectful way, even if you disagree with them.

[Elenian]

Nuclear weapons sometimes come up in these discussions, and it's always interesting to see how they get discussed. Of course in some sense a nuclear weapon is just a big explosion - in an atmosphere, most of the released energy ends up in thermal and blast effects. But there comes a point where differences in degree produce a difference in kind, and it turns out that if you take a million tons of TNT worth of energy and release it very very quickly in a very very small space, the results don't really look like a normal explosion at all.

In a normal explosion, temperatures might briefly reach a couple thousand degrees. This will cause interesting chemical effects (things will melt or burn or vitrify, some substances will even vaporize) but generally occupies familiar physics territory. But a (let's say) megaton-class thermonuclear detonation radiatively ionizes an isothermal plasma sphere, many times brighter than the sun, with temperatures of around a hundred million degrees (~10keV).

At these energies, the familiar equations of condensed-matter physics that you'd use working out the effects of a conventional explosion just don't apply - it's physically impossible for such ephemeral things as, say, molecular bonds to exist in the first place, and particle velocities are so high that even fluid dynamics starts behaving all funny. There's no meaningful sense in which you could call the results 'fire damage' (though of course outside the fireball, the thermal pulse tends to cause a great deal of fire in anything vaguely combustible). In the immortal words of xkcd (in a somewhat different context), 'you don't really die of anything in the traditional sense. You just stop being biology and start being physics' [fort save vs physics damage!]

[MaxiDuRaritry]

So, on that note, how much damage would a [fire] effect have to deal in order to be considered more of a nuclear explosion than a fireball, and what should such a nuclear blast's effects be in D&D terms, both in the short term and in the longer term?

[liquidformat]

So, on that note, how much damage would a [fire] effect have to deal in order to be considered more of a nuclear explosion than a fireball, and what should such a nuclear blast's effects be in D&D terms, both in the short term and in the longer term?

Not going to comment on blast size, I don't know enough about nuclear physics to help meaningfully. However, like I said before if we go from a dnd point of view a disintegrate spell is probably the best comparison to the immediate effect over everything in a certain radius, outside you could form a second ring that is hit by fire, sonic, and force damage with the force and sonic damage having a larger radius than the fire.

After effects of the are would be something like a core of cloud kill surrounded by something like a stinking cloud both of which have added permanent effects depending on the duration of how long you stay inside, or maybe make it into a zone of wild magic or something. I can't think of any good comparison inside of dnd, things can grow and live inside the radiated area but they give off radiation themselves, and are very prone to genetic anomalies due to the radiation, you would expect creatures inside said area to naturally acquire some templates like the one that makes magical beasts smaller, multiheaded, multilimb (DMGII), and so forth.

[Bohandas]

Nuclear weapons sometimes come up in these discussions, and it's always interesting to see how they get discussed. Of course in some sense a nuclear weapon is just a big explosion - in an atmosphere, most of the released energy ends up in thermal and blast effects. But there comes a point where differences in degree produce a difference in kind, and it turns out that if you take a million tons of TNT worth of energy and release it very very quickly in a very very small space, the results don't really look like a normal explosion at all.

In a normal explosion, temperatures might briefly reach a couple thousand degrees. This will cause interesting chemical effects (things will melt or burn or vitrify, some substances will even vaporize) but generally occupies familiar physics territory. But a (let's say) megaton-class thermonuclear detonation radiatively ionizes an isothermal plasma sphere, many times brighter than the sun, with temperatures of around a hundred million degrees (~10keV).

At these energies, the familiar equations of condensed-matter physics that you'd use working out the effects of a conventional explosion just don't apply - it's physically impossible for such ephemeral things as, say, molecular bonds to exist in the first place, and particle velocities are so high that even fluid dynamics starts behaving all funny. There's no meaningful sense in which you could call the results 'fire damage' (though of course outside the fireball, the thermal pulse tends to cause a great deal of fire in anything vaguely combustible). In the immortal words of xkcd (in a somewhat different context), 'you don't really die of anything in the traditional sense. You just stop being biology and start being physics' [fort save vs physics damage!]

I think in D&D terms that would be disintegration


So, on that note, how much damage would a [fire] effect have to deal in order to be considered more of a nuclear explosion than a fireball, and what should such a nuclear blast's effects be in D&D terms, both in the short term and in the longer term?

Well, in addition to the fireball an atomic blast also has a massive shockwave. I've often dedicated thought to what kind of damage a shockwave would be and the best I can think of os some kind of mix of sonic and bludgeoning (and possibly slashing)

[Liquor Box]

There are quite a lot of real world weapons that are dissimilar to physical damage DnD weapons, and more similar to spells.

For example, there's quite a range of real world weapons that rely on sonic frequencies to cause harm. They are not super common, because they are less capable than guns or explosives, but they do have a niche when calibrated to be non-lethal. Depending on how you look at it, you could say these have similar effects to sonic spells but are non-magical, or that they are so similar to magic that they are equivalent for all intents and purposes.

Interestingly for our discussion on effecting incorporeals, the wikipedia page notes that infrasounds has been associated with the perception of hauntings or ghosts. The suggestion is that infrasound causes perceptions, but if we imagined a world where ghosts and shadows exist, infrasound might be something that crosses the planes.

There's also things like tasers, tear gas etc which are more similar to spells than to any sort of physical damage. I'd hazard a guess that a lot of DnD spells were based on replicating some things caused by tech in the real world.


One in game perspective which might be a helpful lens to look at magical vs non-magical effects is the lightning and call lightning spells. The lightning spell is unambiguously magical. Call lightning uses magic to summon a lightning storm which could be said to be natural. Presumably, natural lightning storms occur in the the DnD verse. Would we treat these lightning effects differently? I wouldn't have thought so.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

A flamethrower in the real world isn't magic in the same way that hitting a ghost with a torch isn't magic. Just because it's energy damage doesn't make it magic.

[Bohandas]

We're talking 3.5e right? Incorporeal beings in 3.5e can be imprisoned by thick enough walls

[Zombimode]

We're talking 3.5e right? Incorporeal beings in 3.5e can be imprisoned by thick enough walls

How so?

Incorporeality:

They can pass through solid objects at will, although they cannot see when their eyes are within solid matter.

[Bohandas]

On reading through the rules, my statement apparently applies not to incorporeality in general but specifically to creatures with the incorporeal subtype (including the shadows wraiths, etc of this discussion), who "can enter or pass through solid objects, but must remain adjacent to the object’s exterior"

[Zombimode]

Good catch!

The Rules Compendium has also added this line under Incorporeality.


Which also means that incorporeal creatures have behaved not according to raw in my campaigns in the past. I now have to decide if I keep consistency or if I use the correct rules for incorporeality from now on...

[Kurald Galain]

A flamethrower in the real world isn't magic in the same way that hitting a ghost with a torch isn't magic. Just because it's energy damage doesn't make it magic.

But by medieval standards, a flamethrower is definitely Sufficiently Advanced Technology. In cases like this, consider Clarke's Law.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

But by medieval standards, a flamethrower is definitely Sufficiently Advanced Technology. In cases like this, consider Clarke's Law.It's literally just setting pressurized flammable liquid on fire. It's just about as magic as spitting alcohol into a flame (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wYByxqIAUg).

[Brackenlord]

It's literally just setting pressurized flammable liquid on fire. It's just about as magic as spitting alcohol into a flame (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wYByxqIAUg).

Drunken Master Breath of Flame is considered spell-like and it's literally spitting ignited alcohol.

[Zombimode]

Drunken Master Breath of Flame is considered spell-like and it's literally spitting ignited alcohol.

The fact it is an Sp ability should make it pretty clear that the ability is not just "literally spitting ignited alcohol". If it would, an anti-magic field would not inhibit it.


As for Clarke's 3rd Law, I see no indication why it should be relevant for D&D settings. It makes no postulate about identity, just appearance.
Just if some technology might appear (to someone - appearance is always a 2 part relation) as magic doesnt mean it is magic.

And flamethrowers in particular: well, medieval people have build and used (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Greekfire-madridskylitzes1.jpg) flamethrower-like devices, so that is not really helping your case.

[Bohandas]

But by medieval standards, a flamethrower is definitely Sufficiently Advanced Technology. In cases like this, consider Clarke's Law.

I'm pretty sure flamethrowers go all the way back to the first millnium CE

[Tzardok]

I'm pretty sure flamethrowers go all the way back to the first millnium CE

Greek fire is obviously magic, as no one ever managed to replicate it. :smalltongue:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Greek fire is obviously magic, as no one ever managed to replicate it. :smalltongue:So is like half the stuff that Nicola Tesla did.

My Little Tesla: Genius is Magic?

[Tzardok]

You silly goose, Tesla is an Archer class, not a Caster class.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/25/5c/00/255c00a839a66601fe96ab6951a339c0.jpg

[Elkad]

I'm reminded, ages ago, about a concept once floated around that someone would name their character "Miracle" to nonmagically kill the Tarrasque.


Nuttall did that in his Schooled in Magic books too. BBEG summons a "child of Destiny" to try to influence a prophecy. He gets an Earth teen who's Mom's name was Destiny.

Of course he could have gotten Beyoncé and friends instead.

[Liquor Box]

It's literally just setting pressurized flammable liquid on fire. It's just about as magic as spitting alcohol into a flame (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wYByxqIAUg).

It's about as magic as anything from the real world - not at all.

But if we are combining our reality with the reality of DnD, then it might be more analogous to the fireball spell than to waving a torch around, due the amount of heat generated. I don't know much about flamethrowers though, which is why I didn't mention them as an example.

I do think that weapons that produce sonic, electromagnetic or other such effects are much more similar in how they operate to DnD magic than to non magical DnD sources.

[Elkad]

Only some commoners. Commoner has ONE simple weapon pro.

That's the equivalent to at least having taken a class. Fired a few quarrels at haybales. Was issued one in the militia. Hunted. Some sort of actual practice.

But that commoner's kid can pick it up and squeeze the trigger. Just takes a non-proficiency penalty.

Nearly every gun is dead simple to use. You may not be able to take it apart and put it back together, but you can operate it. Point, squeeze.
Watch someone reload once and you have that part covered too.

Your average 5yr old knows how just from TV. Just like he knows how to drive a car, at least in a video game.
To operate a car, you need 3 things (auto trans). Accelerator, Brake, Steering. If you've never even seen one, someone would have to show you how to start it and get it in gear (shifter, transmission<>brake interlock). You wouldn't know traffic laws, but honestly you can get most of that by observing others for a short time. We've even carefully coded every sign to be language-independent.
An orc could pick up either task almost instantly.

With Comprehend Languages, you could just read the owners manual for either. If you take a gun off a combatant, likely he doesn't have a manual in his pocket, but probably at least 80% of cars still have theirs. A couple percent likely have a driver's education handbook too, which will give you the basics of how traffic interacts (and in many nations, that's not really necessary anyway, you just work your way through the streets the same way you'd work through it on foot or a horse)

If you have language beat (even Tongues, so you don't have written, just audio), youtube has everything you need to learn about... well, anything. And everyone has a tiny "oracle" in their pocket. Say the magic word "haygawgle" and it answers any question you have.

[Liquor Box]

That's the equivalent to at least having taken a class. Fired a few quarrels at haybales. Was issued one in the militia. Hunted. Some sort of actual practice.

But that commoner's kid can pick it up and squeeze the trigger. Just takes a non-proficiency penalty.

Nearly every gun is dead simple to use. You may not be able to take it apart and put it back together, but you can operate it. Point, squeeze.
Watch someone reload once and you have that part covered too.

Your average 5yr old knows how just from TV. Just like he knows how to drive a car, at least in a video game.
To operate a car, you need 3 things (auto trans). Accelerator, Brake, Steering. If you've never even seen one, someone would have to show you how to start it and get it in gear (shifter, transmission<>brake interlock). You wouldn't know traffic laws, but honestly you can get most of that by observing others for a short time. We've even carefully coded every sign to be language-independent.
An orc could pick up either task almost instantly.

With Comprehend Languages, you could just read the owners manual for either. If you take a gun off a combatant, likely he doesn't have a manual in his pocket, but probably at least 80% of cars still have theirs. A couple percent likely have a driver's education handbook too, which will give you the basics of how traffic interacts (and in many nations, that's not really necessary anyway, you just work your way through the streets the same way you'd work through it on foot or a horse)

If you have language beat (even Tongues, so you don't have written, just audio), youtube has everything you need to learn about... well, anything. And everyone has a tiny "oracle" in their pocket. Say the magic word "haygawgle" and it answers any question you have.

A car's owners manual doesn't instruct you how to drive. It might help with things like setting the radio. You say you'd need someone to show you how to start it, put it in gear etc, but who would show your orc? Simply knowing the controls isn't at sufficient - you'd be driving along try to take a corner without slowing and crash. Even once yo got the hang of it, you;d still break so many traffic rules you'd get pulled over. I suppose a sufficiently intelligent villain would eventually learn, but they'd require months of instruction and study just like a real person - in DnD terms they'd probably have to invest some skill points into it (I think it would be one of those skills you can't use untrained).

How would someone from DnD know to go to youtube in the first place, let alone how to use a computer or the internet.

If the villain decided to drive a car, I actually think there's a small but significant chance they'd die in a car crash pretty early on.

[loky1109]

There is significant chance they'd can't even start moving and break engine.

[Bohandas]

That's right, because the need to release the parking brake woukd not be immediately apparent

[D+1]

"Dodge THIS."

[Elkad]

RWD car drives just fine with the parking brake on.
It would actually make a decent training aid, as it slows down quickly when you close the throttle.
And in a few dozen miles it'll wear down till it's not working any more, in effect "taking the training wheels off".

FWD with the brake set hard? It'll drag the back tires. Just like a wagon does when you set it's brake. Look for the lever. Oh sure, it's a tiny pushbutton to release instead of a squeeze handle, but other than that it works exactly the same. Solvable by trial and error.
(incidentally, the pawls are usually plastic. brute force pushing the handle down also works)
But most people don't actually pull the brake that hard (actually, most don't bother at all unless it's on a steep hill), so it'll still drive around just like the RWD one.

Assuming a modern car with an auto trans, the trickiest part of the whole operation is likely the shifter+brake interlock. Because you don't think to try two things at the same time, so you'd never get it in gear. That's in the manual though.

It takes like 30 seconds to learn the controls in the car. Go. Stop. Change direction. Actually driving takes like an hour to learn the basics of being aware where the rest of the car is, turning radius, and getting a feel for the controls.
The rest of the 40 hours of drivers education class is learning the basics of how to predict what the other cars are going to do. Which you CAN learn by observation.

D&D has flying brooms and carpets. Those are vehicles, so you might know the basics of internally-powered vehicle operation from that too. A cart falls over if you go around a corner too fast, why wouldn't you think a car would do the same. If anything, you'd slow down FAR more than anyone else, as you don't understand how much traction rubber tires on textured asphalt actually have.

No, you (an orc) can't start in Paris traffic. Driving a truck around a field in Kansas, and then heading into Smallville? You could manage that. Sure, you are going to do things like drive on the wrong side of the road. The other drivers will stop, you make your way around them and ignore the cursing (that you don't understand anyway) and the flashing lights and various loud noises. At some point there will be one and then several vehicles with a different color of flashing lights and a different loud noise. You may or may not notice that those all have the same heraldry on the side, but eventually they will block you in.

I don't need to speak Russian or Elvish to know that when a bunch of guys all dressed exactly the same surround and try to grab me I'm under arrest. Could be a volleyball team, could be the army, doesn't matter.
Rules for arrest are the same in D&D or the real world. Flee, submit, or render them all combat ineffective (kill them usually) - there are no lesser actions worth attempting. Hiding the bodies prevents both Speak With Dead and recovering the bodycamera footage.

With Comprehend Languages? A dude with zero training simply read the pilot checklist and successfully started, taxied, took off, and flew around for a couple hours in a multi-engine jet.

[Liquor Box]

The rest of the 40 hours of drivers education class is learning the basics of how to predict what the other cars are going to do. Which you CAN learn by observation.

I agree with this. Most people learn this at least in part with observation. Usually they have 10+ years of observation before they do any drivers education.


D&D has flying brooms and carpets. Those are vehicles, so you might know the basics of internally-powered vehicle operation from that too. A cart falls over if you go around a corner too fast, why wouldn't you think a car would do the same. If anything, you'd slow down FAR more than anyone else, as you don't understand how much traction rubber tires on textured asphalt actually have.

Flying brooms and carpets both fly, so there's little to fly into. They are controlled by spoken command. They are no more analogous to driving than walking is.

Not everyone in DnD is skilled at handling a cart. It requires a skill (profession - driver) check. I suppose that if your Orc happens to have that skill, they might have a slight head start in handling a car in terms of how the physics work. But still only slight given how different the vehicles are.


No, you (an orc) can't start in Paris traffic. Driving a truck around a field in Kansas, and then heading into Smallville? You could manage that. Sure, you are going to do things like drive on the wrong side of the road. The other drivers will stop, you make your way around them and ignore the cursing (that you don't understand anyway) and the flashing lights and various loud noises. At some point there will be one and then several vehicles with a different color of flashing lights and a different loud noise. You may or may not notice that those all have the same heraldry on the side, but eventually they will block you in.

Well it depends where you arrive. If you arrived in downtown Paris, you might surmise that a less urban setting exists, but the best you could do would be to walk in some direction and hope you arrive there.

But whether you start your trial and error learning in Paris or Kansas, there still a real chance of dying in a car crash before you enact any sort of plan.


I don't need to speak Russian or Elvish to know that when a bunch of guys all dressed exactly the same surround and try to grab me I'm under arrest. Could be a volleyball team, could be the army, doesn't matter.
Rules for arrest are the same in D&D or the real world. Flee, submit, or render them all combat ineffective (kill them usually) - there are no lesser actions worth attempting. Hiding the bodies prevents both Speak With Dead and recovering the bodycamera footage.

This is all true. But I suggest that all three of your options are much tougher with real world police than with guards in Dnd.

Real world police have immediate communications with HQ, and have check-in protocols. HQ has the ability to send more units very quickly with cars (and if our villain murders police, they will send elite units). Because of guns, police are much more dangerous that town guards. In many countries, police vehicles (which our villain probably wouldn't think to hide) have camera footage. Real world police can pursue more easily because they are better drivers than our villain, and if our villain has murdered police, they have surveillance techniques like helicopters. Real world handcuffs and jails are likely to much more secure than DnD equivalents.

As you say, surrender, fleeing or fighting are options on both worlds. So real world police are prepared for those things. The things that differ between the world are how these things are done. Although some will see high level magicians as having more capability than magic, the sorts of resources the town guard has are pretty clearly less than modern police forces.


With Comprehend Languages? A dude with zero training simply read the pilot checklist and successfully started, taxied, took off, and flew around for a couple hours in a multi-engine jet.

It's not impossible. It's just that there's a fair chance of death. But of course the 'dude' had several advantages over your orc.

[Elkad]

Nowhere does it say a Broom of Flying is guided by command. It's activated by that, and you can give it commands if you wish, but it works "as overland flight" in general. Aside - I always ask my players what posture they fly in by default. Superman style? Standing up and floating like Magneto? Sitting in a tailor seat? Flapping their arms furiously? Something else?

Again, you don't need points in Carting to drive a cart. Just like you generally don't need points in Climb to go up a ladder. You need points when you attempt something difficult.
Go up the ladder at double speed? Make a Climb check. Go around that sharp turn with your mules at a gallop? Make a Carting check. Go around that cloverleaf with the orange warning sign marked "35" at 70? Make a Driving check. (not a difficult one, Earth signs are super conservative)

You don't know if you land in Paris or Kansas. Odds are it's more like the latter, even if whatever got you here carefully placed you somewhere with land to stand on and a survivable climate. On the other hand, Paris is so big you actually might conclude this world is one all-encompassing megapolis after a few days of walking...

D&D cops of the commoner sort? Yeah, easier than ours. D&D cops backed by scrying spells, speak with dead, invisible stalkers, etc? They might be worse. And if you are non-human and leave hair, DNA, etc (do you even have DNA?), it's going to confuse the hell out of the crime lab.

Unfortunately, we don't know if the plane thief could have pulled off a landing. (correction, it was a Dash8, multi-engined prop plane, not a jet). With tower guiding him? Probably. On his own? Probably not on a short-field, but he might have managed it on a long runway.

"Think I’m gonna try to do a barrel roll,” he said, “and if that goes good, then I’ll just nose down and call it a night.”
He managed the barrel roll. The fighter pilots shadowing him were stunned he pulled it off.

And an orc is pretty close to the worst case. Thread was "strongest". Many villains would either not be hurt seriously in a crash, or would recover extremely quickly, or have superhuman reflexes and would just not crash. And that's without just making an Earth native drive for them (or stealing their memories, etc).

[Liquor Box]

Nowhere does it say a Broom of Flying is guided by command. It's activated by that, and you can give it commands if you wish, but it works "as overland flight" in general. Aside - I always ask my players what posture they fly in by default. Superman style? Standing up and floating like Magneto? Sitting in a tailor seat? Flapping their arms furiously? Something else?

Carpets are though. Neither is at all similar to driving a car. I don't think either would give any advantage at all to learning to drive.


Again, you don't need points in Carting to drive a cart. Just like you generally don't need points in Climb to go up a ladder. You need points when you attempt something difficult.
Go up the ladder at double speed? Make a Climb check. Go around that sharp turn with your mules at a gallop? Make a Carting check. Go around that cloverleaf with the orange warning sign marked "35" at 70? Make a Driving check. (not a difficult one, Earth signs are super conservative)

What rule are you referring to which says you don't need points?

The rule I am referencing is the description of the profession skill. "Driver" is listed as one of the profession types the skill applies to.

Profession is trained only, climb is not, which explains why driving requires skill points and climbing doesn't.


D&D cops of the commoner sort? Yeah, easier than ours. D&D cops backed by scrying spells, speak with dead, invisible stalkers, etc? They might be worse. And if you are non-human and leave hair, DNA, etc (do you even have DNA?), it's going to confuse the hell out of the crime lab.

DnD cops of the sort generally described in campaign setting and the like. Not commoners, but often lower level warriors or fighters, sometimes backed by a small number of casters.

Eve if we were comparing real world cops with some sort of high level DnD hunting squad with the sorts of abilities you describe, the real world cops abilities would be unfamiliar to your orc. The real world cops' abilities would be unfamiliar.


Unfortunately, we don't know if the plane thief could have pulled off a landing. (correction, it was a Dash8, multi-engined prop plane, not a jet). With tower guiding him? Probably. On his own? Probably not on a short-field, but he might have managed it on a long runway.

He managed the barrel roll. The fighter pilots shadowing him were stunned he pulled it off.


What difference does it make? A guy tried something dangerous and survived (rolled a nat 20 to use DnD parlance). Your orc might try something dangerous and die. Just because a person survived doing something dangerous doesn't render all dangerous things harmless.


And an orc is pretty close to the worst case. Thread was "strongest". Many villains would either not be hurt seriously in a crash, or would recover extremely quickly, or have superhuman reflexes and would just not crash. And that's without just making an Earth native drive for them (or stealing their memories, etc).

There's no reason to think the villain has better reflexes than people from earth. This idea that DnD humans can get abilities into the 20s and 30s, whereas real world humans are restricted to 18.

There might be some villainns who could be confident of not being killed in a serious crash, but not many. What about DnD villains would make them immune from death in a crash?

You are right, the thread was about the strongest. But as people have already pointed out there are a large number of very powerful DnD people and creatures that would not be able to defeat the real world (eg tarrasque, epic level fighter etc). So because we've establish that the earch can beat extremely powerful DnD villains, people have been talking about whether there are any other villains who can beat the earth.

[AvatarVecna]

I saw people talking about flamethrowers and how they might work in D&D, and I'm not sure tbh. The reason I say I'm not sure is, while the DMG has a weapon called "Flamer" in the same section with the dynamite and the guns, it's not quite the same. The Flamer is listed under "futuristic weapons" alongside things like the Antimatter Rifle. But also, the effect it has (dealing fire damage to things in a 200 ft line) isn't actually all that unrealistic? Like, I went googling for flamethrower ranges, and at least for portable versions, max range tends to be 150 ft (although that's probably in an arc going through the air, not a line going through space, yknow?). And bigger versions (for like tanks and stuff) had at least double that range back in World War times. But the effective range of IRL flamethrowers tends to be much shorter, and the damage isn't all that significant, and also it's really weird because it affects an AoE (5 ft x 200 ft line) but it doesn't call for a saving throw, which implies you're still making an attack roll??? And like, I think if you were to design an IRL flamethrower in D&D rules, it would either be short range AoE or it would be long range "launch a flaming glob of goo at somebody 200 ft away" instead of this 200 ft line, so making an attack roll is how a real flamethrower should work?

The DMG "flamer" is weird and unrealistic, but only slightly in a number of ways that bug me.


I think in D&D terms that would be disintegration



Well, in addition to the fireball an atomic blast also has a massive shockwave. I've often dedicated thought to what kind of damage a shockwave would be and the best I can think of os some kind of mix of sonic and bludgeoning (and possibly slashing)

This is why I brought up the dynamite comparison in the first place. Dynamite doesn't deal fire damage because the way it hurts you isn't "being so hot", it's the shockwave. We can debate about whether D&D nuclear devices are sufficiently "shockwavey" enough that they should be different, but the shockwave made by a small bit of dynamite is nonmagical bludgeoning. It says 3d6 in the table and 2d6 in the text, but the dynamite can be stacked for up to 10d6 max.


It's about as magic as anything from the real world - not at all.

But if we are combining our reality with the reality of DnD, then it might be more analogous to the fireball spell than to waving a torch around, due the amount of heat generated. I don't know much about flamethrowers though, which is why I didn't mention them as an example.

I do think that weapons that produce sonic, electromagnetic or other such effects are much more similar in how they operate to DnD magic than to non magical DnD sources.

"Working similarly" in that they create an awful lot of it doesn't make it magic. "Magic" is not the only thing capable of making huge effects, even in D&D. Alchemical items require magic to create (or at the very least, require the creator be capable of magic? such an odd distinction), but they aren't themselves magical - similar to how the DMG has nonmagical fire bombs and dynamite. This is why holy water has to specify that it affects incorporeal undead; if it didn't have that specific rule, it wouldn't override the general rule about nonmagic stuff affecting incorporeal targets.

(I will admit, however, that this does at least provide one pure-D&D case where an otherwise objectively nonmagical effect affecting incorporeal creatures. It's an inherently divine effect, AFAICT, but not a magic one. I'm unsure if IRL holy water and D&D holy water actually work the same, but even if they can't, alchemy is a chemical process and given time we could probably maybe out how to craft it?)

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is, alchemical items can be enhanced with Augmented Alchemy with no upper limit. Alchemist's Fire and Acid Flasks are inherently nonmagical, but if you're good enough at crafting, you could theoretically craft one that could kill basically anything instantly (provided they don't avoid the damage somehow). I will note that this is still pretty difficult, because alchemical items are terrible and Augmented Alchemy makes them worse: damage doesn't double the way most things do, so two applications of Augmented Alchemy applied to a damage-dealing alchemical item doesn't deal x4 damage, it deals +200% damage. But if you could theoretically hit a DC 180000 Craft (Alchemy) checks, and had ~3.58 x 106292 gp to spend, you could absolutely make a nonmagical alchemical item that deals 9000d6 fire damage.


Carpets are though. Neither is at all similar to driving a car. I don't think either would give any advantage at all to learning to drive.



What rule are you referring to which says you don't need points?

The rule I am referencing is the description of the profession skill. "Driver" is listed as one of the profession types the skill applies to.

Profession is trained only, climb is not, which explains why driving requires skill points and climbing doesn't.

I agree that driving is inherently going to require some actual investment. It's theoretically possible that a D&D person with an innate understanding of technology could figure out how to get a car into motion and how to stop it, if they were driving in an empty parking lot, but that's a far sight different from knowing how to navigate safely in even a light amount of traffic. Supporting the "profession" approach: Stormwrack uses Profession (Sailor) for all the ship stuff, including steering...and the check DC gets harder the fewer crew you have manning the ship. It's theoretically possible to steer a sailing ship all by yourself, if you're good enough at it. In a D&D sense of "good enough at it", at least: checks get up to DC 30 generally, and having less than a quarter of the full crew you should have by default means +15 to DCs. If you can reliably hit DC 45, you can totally go sailing on your lonesome. I think if there were going to be driving rules related to cars, dexterity should probably factor into it somehow, but Profession is perfectly serviceable and has precedent.


There's no reason to think the villain has better reflexes than people from earth. This idea that DnD humans can get abilities into the 20s and 30s, whereas real world humans are restricted to 18.

The whole point of the attribute system is giving a basic for measuring D&D capabilities against IRL ones. 10 is average person, 18 is more-or-less peak human. It's literally definitional - those scores are defined by their IRL equivalents. Even if we're assuming IRL people aren't equivalent to more than lvl 10 folk, we can hike that a couple points to 20? I'm not even really sure how to engage with the argument that D&D humans and IRL humans have the same ceiling for attributes when D&D humans don't have an attribute ceiling at all. However much you may wish to argue in favor of IRL humans, do you really think Dex 300 is within their reach? Because it's within reach of D&D humans. Epic goes up to infinite.

And even if we're extremely generous to IRL people and assuming that stats up to 30 are possible, D&D characters literally don't have an upper limit. They could have Dex 30 or Dex 300. There's no existing statblocks that have Dex 300, but epic lets them just keep going up forever if they want to.


There might be some villainns who could be confident of not being killed in a serious crash, but not many. What about DnD villains would make them immune from death in a crash?

There's ways to be immune to damage types (or just damage in general), as well as ways to just plain be immune to dying from damage. But those all tend to be pretty specific. Most villains are going to be depending on hit points and seat belts to save them from a crash, same as a normal human. Difference is, D&D villains tend to be capable of surviving things normal humans just can't, by virtue of being way tougher. If they're wearing the seatbelt, I think most things that are powerful enough to be called "villains" can survive even absolutely awful crashes. But honestly even without the seatbelts they've got a pretty good shot. Falling at Terminal Velocity for humans is ~120 mph. You hit the ground, you decelerate very abruptly, you take damage. In D&D, the damage caps at 20d6 because past a certain point you don't fall faster (which IRL is what we call Terminal Velocity). Most car crashes are going to decelerate you less quickly than falling to the earth, because whatever your car crashed into (another car, a brick wall) probably isn't going to be as immovable as the earth is to a falling human.

Even if they are (you crash into a 5 ft thick brick wall, for example), terminal velocity gives us a good argument that a car crash of 120 mph will deal ~20d6 damage at most, assuming you take all that deceleration as damage the same as if you were falling unaided. In truth, the seatbelt will maximize your ability to absorb that damage, and also modern cars are designed to crumble in a way that directs the force of a crash through the car instead of through the passengers. 20d6 is just 70 damage - technically it could be up to 120 damage, but realistically ~99% of cases will see the damage hovering from 50-90, and ~83% of cases will see the damage hovering from 60-80. It's almost irrelevant, because for a lot of villains, even 120 damage is pretty survivable just with pure hit points - no seat belt, no crumpling car, heck no damage reduction even. Just pure HP is enough to survive a 120 mph impact. A wizard 17 with Con 16 after items is gonna have 93.5 HP; in ~99.91% of belt-less car-less 120 mph crashes, they're still conscious. A barbarian 10 with Con 16 (no rage, no items) is looking at 95 HP, and ~99.97% chance of still being conscious.

(Technically, that's probably not 100% true, but rather 95% true. Massive Damage rules are still a thing even if most tables ignore them, so anybody taking over 50 damage from anything has to make a Fort save vs instant death, and those always have a 5% chance to fail. Well, I guess if you have the Steadfast Determination feat, a nat 1 on a fort save doesn't autofail, so that would help protect from it?)

There's faster crashes we could have to deal with, and they would probably deal more damage, sure. But villains with enough HP to survive bigger crashes than this aren't exactly uncommon either. If we assume that somebody you crash into takes the same damage as you...like, this is an extreme example, but the tarrasque has 858 HP. It'd take ~250d6 damage to take it below the death threshold (ignoring how pure damage isn't actually enough to kill the tarrasque). That's a crash that hits ~12.5 times as hard as hitting the ground at 120 mph. Because kinetic energy is [0.5]x[mass]x[velocity squared], a crash that hits~12.5 times as hard is a crash that's going ~3.5 times as fast. So presuming that crash damage scales up forever (which it probably should), it'd take a ~424 mph crash to get the tarrasque below -10 HP.


You are right, the thread was about the strongest. But as people have already pointed out there are a large number of very powerful DnD people and creatures that would not be able to defeat the real world (eg tarrasque, epic level fighter etc). So because we've establish that the earch can beat extremely powerful DnD villains, people have been talking about whether there are any other villains who can beat the earth.

Yeah. The point I was making bringing up incorporeal creatures is that "most powerful" is a weird question to engage with, because Earth's ability to defeat something is less a question of power and more a question of versatility. We can design a monsters that's just an enormous hit point sponge, and earth can probably still kill it with big enough bombs; this would be "the strongest villain Earth can beat", but in a very "we designed a villain to be both strong and defeatable" kinda way. But if there's enemies our weapons can't touch, there's not much we can do other than avoid them and hope they can't wipe out the planet in a reasonable timeframe.

[Liquor Box]

This is why I brought up the dynamite comparison in the first place. Dynamite doesn't deal fire damage because the way it hurts you isn't "being so hot", it's the shockwave. We can debate about whether D&D nuclear devices are sufficiently "shockwavey" enough that they should be different, but the shockwave made by a small bit of dynamite is nonmagical bludgeoning. It says 3d6 in the table and 2d6 in the text, but the dynamite can be stacked for up to 10d6 max.

As myself and others have pointed out, there are a variety of effects of nuclear weapons beyond shockwaves and heat. There are lots of ways why they are very different from dynamite (which is only a yardstick of the energy released by a nuke) One example that I raised was gamma rays (similar to an xray but with higher photon energy).


"Working similarly" in that they create an awful lot of it doesn't make it magic. "Magic" is not the only thing capable of making huge effects, even in D&D. Alchemical items require magic to create (or at the very least, require the creator be capable of magic? such an odd distinction), but they aren't themselves magical - similar to how the DMG has nonmagical fire bombs and dynamite. This is why holy water has to specify that it affects incorporeal undead; if it didn't have that specific rule, it wouldn't override the general rule about nonmagic stuff affecting incorporeal targets.

To be very clear, I am not saying that gamma rays or weapons that rely on sonic frequencies are actually magic, so there's not need to specify that they are not. I am saying they exist outside outside the DnD model completely so are in no way addressed by it. Not because of scale, but because of the type of damage. So the DnD model does not give direct guidance as to how they might effect things like incorporeals.

That being the case, one way of deciding how real world concepts interact with DnD concepts is by analogising them with one another. What is similar to what?

The OP has given us another way of looking at it. He said that magic has always existed in our world, and that we should assume legends and rumours of supernatural or magical activity were actually true. That suggests that ghosts do indeed exist in the real world. According to wikipedia infrasound (produced by tech) is associated with reports of ghosts. Ghosts not being real, the idea is that infrasound cause perception of ghostly effects in humans. But if ghosts have been real all along, then it would appear infrasound does effect incorporeals.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3077192


(I will admit, however, that this does at least provide one pure-D&D case where an otherwise objectively nonmagical effect affecting incorporeal creatures. It's an inherently divine effect, AFAICT, but not a magic one. I'm unsure if IRL holy water and D&D holy water actually work the same, but even if they can't, alchemy is a chemical process and given time we could probably maybe out how to craft it?)

I suggest avoiding any discussion of real world holy water or whether real world religious figures can call on real world gods to perform divine magic, or whether real world reports of miracles were in fact divinely powered miracles to avoid breaking the forum rules on religion.


Anyway, the reason I bring it up is, alchemical items can be enhanced with Augmented Alchemy with no upper limit. Alchemist's Fire and Acid Flasks are inherently nonmagical, but if you're good enough at crafting, you could theoretically craft one that could kill basically anything instantly (provided they don't avoid the damage somehow). I will note that this is still pretty difficult, because alchemical items are terrible and Augmented Alchemy makes them worse: damage doesn't double the way most things do, so two applications of Augmented Alchemy applied to a damage-dealing alchemical item doesn't deal x4 damage, it deals +200% damage. But if you could theoretically hit a DC 180000 Craft (Alchemy) checks, and had ~3.58 x 106292 gp to spend, you could absolutely make a nonmagical alchemical item that deals 9000d6 fire damage.


Which remains very dissimilar to the sorts of things I have described.

The most similar thing i can think of in DnD to a nuclear reaction is the inside of a sun or star. Does DnD have any rules for that?


I agree that driving is inherently going to require some actual investment. It's theoretically possible that a D&D person with an innate understanding of technology could figure out how to get a car into motion and how to stop it, if they were driving in an empty parking lot, but that's a far sight different from knowing how to navigate safely in even a light amount of traffic. Supporting the "profession" approach: Stormwrack uses Profession (Sailor) for all the ship stuff, including steering...and the check DC gets harder the fewer crew you have manning the ship. It's theoretically possible to steer a sailing ship all by yourself, if you're good enough at it. In a D&D sense of "good enough at it", at least: checks get up to DC 30 generally, and having less than a quarter of the full crew you should have by default means +15 to DCs. If you can reliably hit DC 45, you can totally go sailing on your lonesome. I think if there were going to be driving rules related to cars, dexterity should probably factor into it somehow, but Profession is perfectly serviceable and has precedent.

Profession is also the skill check used for driving carts and such

I think we can agree that a DnD person (or similarly capable moster) could learn to drive with the same practice and instruction that an earth person requires, with only the same minimal risk of a fatal accident that an earth person would have. That might take some time though, and there would be risks in finding an instructor.


The whole point of the attribute system is giving a basic for measuring D&D capabilities against IRL ones. 10 is average person, 18 is more-or-less peak human. It's literally definitional - those scores are defined by their IRL equivalents. Even if we're assuming IRL people aren't equivalent to more than lvl 10 folk, we can hike that a couple points to 20? I'm not even really sure how to engage with the argument that D&D humans and IRL humans have the same ceiling for attributes when D&D humans don't have an attribute ceiling at all. However much you may wish to argue in favor of IRL humans, do you really think Dex 300 is within their reach? Because it's within reach of D&D humans. Epic goes up to infinite.

And even if we're extremely generous to IRL people and assuming that stats up to 30 are possible, D&D characters literally don't have an upper limit. They could have Dex 30 or Dex 300. There's no existing statblocks that have Dex 300, but epic lets them just keep going up forever if they want to.

You're going need a source for 18 being peak human. It simple isn't, because the system allows for humans to move beyond that, even with just the boost they get every 4th level.

Even if it was intended that way, it doesn't work for real world humans. The heaviest weight lifted by a human was 6,270 pounds (by Paul Anderson). That would require a strength in the the 30s according to the lifting rules (a character may lift double his maximum weight off the ground). The heaviest overhead lift (580pds) would require str 23.

Intelligence is less measurable. But an 18 score is statistically 99.5th percentile (one in every 200 people will get an 18 rolling 3d6). There are 40,000,000 people in the world in the 99.5th percentile or above. But these 40million are not equal, some are much much smarter than others.

As to theoretical upper limits, I don't know. The record lifts noted above were supposedly achieved without steroids. Who knows how strong and smart we could get with genetic engineering.


There's ways to be immune to damage types (or just damage in general), as well as ways to just plain be immune to dying from damage. But those all tend to be pretty specific. Most villains are going to be depending on hit points and seat belts to save them from a crash, same as a normal human. Difference is, D&D villains tend to be capable of surviving things normal humans just can't, by virtue of being way tougher. If they're wearing the seatbelt, I think most things that are powerful enough to be called "villains" can survive even absolutely awful crashes. But honestly even without the seatbelts they've got a pretty good shot. Falling at Terminal Velocity for humans is ~120 mph. You hit the ground, you decelerate very abruptly, you take damage. In D&D, the damage caps at 20d6 because past a certain point you don't fall faster (which IRL is what we call Terminal Velocity). Most car crashes are going to decelerate you less quickly than falling to the earth, because whatever your car crashed into (another car, a brick wall) probably isn't going to be as immovable as the earth is to a falling human.

Even if they are (you crash into a 5 ft thick brick wall, for example), terminal velocity gives us a good argument that a car crash of 120 mph will deal ~20d6 damage at most, assuming you take all that deceleration as damage the same as if you were falling unaided. In truth, the seatbelt will maximize your ability to absorb that damage, and also modern cars are designed to crumble in a way that directs the force of a crash through the car instead of through the passengers. 20d6 is just 70 damage - technically it could be up to 120 damage, but realistically ~99% of cases will see the damage hovering from 50-90, and ~83% of cases will see the damage hovering from 60-80. It's almost irrelevant, because for a lot of villains, even 120 damage is pretty survivable just with pure hit points - no seat belt, no crumpling car, heck no damage reduction even. Just pure HP is enough to survive a 120 mph impact. A wizard 17 with Con 16 after items is gonna have 93.5 HP; in ~99.91% of belt-less car-less 120 mph crashes, they're still conscious. A barbarian 10 with Con 16 (no rage, no items) is looking at 95 HP, and ~99.97% chance of still being conscious.

(Technically, that's probably not 100% true, but rather 95% true. Massive Damage rules are still a thing even if most tables ignore them, so anybody taking over 50 damage from anything has to make a Fort save vs instant death, and those always have a 5% chance to fail. Well, I guess if you have the Steadfast Determination feat, a nat 1 on a fort save doesn't autofail, so that would help protect from it?)

There's faster crashes we could have to deal with, and they would probably deal more damage, sure. But villains with enough HP to survive bigger crashes than this aren't exactly uncommon either. If we assume that somebody you crash into takes the same damage as you...like, this is an extreme example, but the tarrasque has 858 HP. It'd take ~250d6 damage to take it below the death threshold (ignoring how pure damage isn't actually enough to kill the tarrasque). That's a crash that hits ~12.5 times as hard as hitting the ground at 120 mph. Because kinetic energy is [0.5]x[mass]x[velocity squared], a crash that hits~12.5 times as hard is a crash that's going ~3.5 times as fast. So presuming that crash damage scales up forever (which it probably should), it'd take a ~424 mph crash to get the tarrasque below -10 HP.

I tend to agree with most of this.

I accept that it's not impossible for a DnD creature to be beyond dying in a car crash. The point that I really wanted to make is that we shouldn't assume someone would survive because they have more hit points than the poster assumes real world people would have.

I think your modelling for the damage from going though a windsheild, by comparison to terminal velocity is a good one. But worth noting that there are other sorts of damage possible in a car accident - being crushed by a truck , or having a piece of metal go though your head. So I think it possible that even someone with 200 hit points could be killed.


Yeah. The point I was making bringing up incorporeal creatures is that "most powerful" is a weird question to engage with, because Earth's ability to defeat something is less a question of power and more a question of versatility. We can design a monsters that's just an enormous hit point sponge, and earth can probably still kill it with big enough bombs; this would be "the strongest villain Earth can beat", but in a very "we designed a villain to be both strong and defeatable" kinda way. But if there's enemies our weapons can't touch, there's not much we can do other than avoid them and hope they can't wipe out the planet in a reasonable timeframe.

It's a bit weird. The existence of creatures like shadows who might arguably be difficult for the earth to defeat, doesn't stop us talking about the most powerful though. We can talk about whether earth could defeat the tarrasque even if it's true that there's less powerful creatures that the earth could not defeat.

The point I was making was that discussion had moved on from the original question a little.

[Tzardok]

The OP has given us another way of looking at it. He said that magic has always existed in our world, and that we should assume legends and rumours of supernatural or magical activity were actually true. That suggests that ghosts do indeed exist in the real world. According to wikipedia infrasound (produced by tech) is associated with reports of ghosts. Ghosts not being real, the idea is that infrasound cause perception of ghostly effects in humans. But if ghosts have been real all along, then it would appear infrasound does effect incorporeals.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3077192


That sounds (heh) to me like you are confusing cause and effect. Infrasound happens when ghosts appear means that ghosts cause infrasound. There's no proof that it can affect them.



The most similar thing i can think of in DnD to a nuclear reaction is the inside of a sun or star. Does DnD have any rules for that?


2e at least had rules for radioactivity. The Glowing Dunes, the border between Radiance and Magma, are called out as causing radiation sickness, even if it isn't called that:


Those who travel through the area must make a saving throw vs. death magic each day. Any poor creature who fails this roll becomes afflicted with a horrible disease or curse (no one knows which for sure). Before long, nausea sets in. This is followed by blistering skin, hair loss, bleeding gums, blindness, and countless other nasty symptoms before the victim dies in 3d20 painful days. All in all, a more unpleasant death would be difficult to imagine.

As it is a Planescape book, there isn't a First Party conversion of that, but a Third Party may exist.

[Liquor Box]

That sounds (heh) to me like you are confusing cause and effect. Infrasound happens when ghosts appear means that ghosts cause infrasound. There's no proof that it can affect them.

Sure, in real life it is theorised to cause them. But if it turned out that real world ghostly experiences were actually caused by ghosts in the nature of DnD incorporeals, then infrasound obviously doesn't cause them so how do we explain the association? I'm not sure of the answer, but that something in the real physical world having a relationship to DnD style ghosts does suggest it can cross the plane somehow.


2e at least had rules for radioactivity. The Glowing Dunes, the border between Radiance and Magma, are called out as causing radiation sickness, even if it isn't called that:

As it is a Planescape book, there isn't a First Party conversion of that, but a Third Party may exist.

Interesting that the save is against death magic.

[Tzardok]

Sure, in real life it is theorised to cause them. But if it turned out that real world ghostly experiences were actually caused by ghosts in the nature of DnD incorporeals, then infrasound obviously doesn't cause them so how do we explain the association? I'm not sure of the answer, but that something in the real physical world having a relationship to DnD style ghosts does suggest it can cross the plane somehow.


I don't see what you mean. Do you want to imply that infrasound causes ghosts to appear? Because that's not what hobby ghost hunters do. They search for infrasound as a sign of ghostly activity. It also doesn't mean that infrasound is interplanar. Ghosts can be seen when they manifest, this doesn't imply that light can cross planar borders.


Interesting that the save is against death magic.

2e had a whole lot of different saves:

Save vs. Paralyzation, Poison, and Death Magic
Save vs. Rod, Staff, or Wand
Save vs. Petrification or Polymorph
Save vs. Breath Weapon
Save vs. Spell (which is a catch-all for everything else)

That radioactivity is in the category that protects against death effects, poisons and diseases doesn't imply that it is magic. In 3.x it would simply be a Fortitude save.

Edit: Also, the Quasielemental Plane of Radiance is mostly made up of hot light and plasma. If it had the gravity, it would be just like standing inside a star.

[Liquor Box]

I don't see what you mean. Do you want to imply that infrasound causes ghosts to appear? Because that's not what hobby ghost hunters do. They search for infrasound as a sign of ghostly activity. It also doesn't mean that infrasound is interplanar. Ghosts can be seen when they manifest, this doesn't imply that light can cross planar borders.

The theory is that infrasound does cause ghosts to appear. Infrasound can't be heard by us, but it appears it can be sensed at some level. The idea is when we sense infrasound we perceive it as ghostly effects, and therefore at some reports of ghostly activity can be attributed to infrasound.

Presumably the hobby ghost hunters you refer to find infrasound at places of ghostly activity because the infrasound caused the ghostly perceptions.

If it turned out that all those ghosts were real (like in DnD), we would have to explain how infrasound produced in the real world correlates with their presence differently.


2e had a whole lot of different saves:

Save vs. Paralyzation, Poison, and Death Magic
Save vs. Rod, Staff, or Wand
Save vs. Petrification or Polymorph
Save vs. Breath Weapon
Save vs. Spell (which is a catch-all for everything else)

That radioactivity is in the category that protects against death effects, poisons and diseases doesn't imply that it is magic. In 3.x it would simply be a Fortitude save.

The description you quoted doesn't say "death effects", it says "death magic". It also doesn't say save vs Paralyzation, Poison, and Death Magic, it only lists the death magic element. It also says nothing about disease.

When I look at the description of the things that save applies to it says:

This is used whenever a character is affected by a paralyzing attack (regardless of source), poison (of any strength), or certain spells and magical items that otherwise kill the character outright (as listed in their descriptions).

So it does sound to me like a save against death magic (not paralyzation or poison) does imply a magic effect. If they had meant it to be disease-like they could have made the save against the poison part, but they specified death magic instead.

[Tzardok]

The theory is that infrasound does cause ghosts to appear. Infrasound can't be heard by us, but it appears it can be sensed at some level. The idea is when we sense infrasound we perceive it as ghostly effects, and therefore at some reports of ghostly activity can be attributed to infrasound.

Presumably the hobby ghost hunters you refer to find infrasound at places of ghostly activity because the infrasound caused the ghostly perceptions.

If it turned out that all those ghosts were real (like in DnD), we would have to explain how infrasound produced in the real world correlates with their presence differently.

Which is exactly what I was talking about. If there are ghosts, and those are connected to infrasound (which isn't a given, otherwise beings with tremorsense would be able to sense the appearance of ghosts in D&D), there are only two ways this connection can have: either ghosts cause infrasound, which doesn't necessarily mean (as already mentioned) that infrasound can affect anything about them, or infrasound makes ghosts appear, which is just wut? If those ghosts are anything like the ones in the SRD, then that one can't be it.



The description you quoted doesn't say "death effects", it says "death magic". It also doesn't say save vs Paralyzation, Poison, and Death Magic, it only lists the death magic element. It also says nothing about disease.

When I look at the description of the things that save applies to it says:


So it does sound to me like a save against death magic (not paralyzation or poison) does imply a magic effect. If they had meant it to be disease-like they could have made the save against the poison part, but they specified death magic instead.

The description says death magic because 2e didn't have any death effects that weren't magic. It also says Save against Death (instead of Save against Poison) because it is a deadly effect that isn't a poison and against which poison immunity isn't supposed to be appliable. And it doesn't say Save against Paralyzation, Poison or Death Magic, because that would be unnecessarily long.

[Liquor Box]

Which is exactly what I was talking about. If there are ghosts, and those are connected to infrasound (which isn't a given, otherwise beings with tremorsense would be able to sense the appearance of ghosts in D&D), there are only two ways this connection can have: either ghosts cause infrasound, which doesn't necessarily mean (as already mentioned) that infrasound can affect anything about them, or infrasound makes ghosts appear, which is just wut? If those ghosts are anything like the ones in the SRD, then that one can't be it.

I don't think those are the only two possibilities. It could be that infrasound attracts them. It could be that infrasound forces them to manifest (so they are perceived). I think there are lots of theoretical possibilities if ghosts were real as in DnD.


The description says death magic because 2e didn't have any death effects that weren't magic. It also says Save against Death (instead of Save against Poison) because it is a deadly effect that isn't a poison and against which poison immunity isn't supposed to be appliable. And it doesn't say Save against Paralyzation, Poison or Death Magic, because that would be unnecessarily long.

It doesn't say you save against "death", it says "death magic", and as you point out there aren't any death effects that aren't magic. The description of the save only mentions magic that kills the character as falling in the death magic category.

Death magic is not the normal save used for diseases in 2ed (its either a percentage chance to save, or a save vs poison according to this thread), so your mention of disease in that category wasn't correct.
https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=83855

Do you have a source for saying that a save vs death magic doesn't imply the effect is magical? Because at the moment that seems to clearly be what the name of the save, and the description of it imply.

[Bohandas]

Rules for arrest are the same in D&D or the real world. Flee, submit, or render them all combat ineffective (kill them usually) - there are no lesser actions worth attempting.

Actually, depending on your class D&D has a couple more options. You could make yourself unassailable (such as through incorporeality or a barrier like resiliant sphere) or yiu could control their minds, like erase theyr memory of you or something

[Elkad]

Actually, depending on your class D&D has a couple more options. You could make yourself unassailable (such as through incorporeality or a barrier like resiliant sphere) or yiu could control their minds, like erase theyr memory of you or something

You still have to flee or win at some point, just being invulnerable doesn't do it. Otherwise you either get waited out, or they come up with a way to overcome your defenses.

As to the second, yes I forgot "make them give up". Which could be mind control, or just a bribe.

[liquidformat]

Yeah. The point I was making bringing up incorporeal creatures is that "most powerful" is a weird question to engage with, because Earth's ability to defeat something is less a question of power and more a question of versatility. We can design a monsters that's just an enormous hit point sponge, and earth can probably still kill it with big enough bombs; this would be "the strongest villain Earth can beat", but in a very "we designed a villain to be both strong and defeatable" kinda way. But if there's enemies our weapons can't touch, there's not much we can do other than avoid them and hope they can't wipe out the planet in a reasonable timeframe.

I think part of the discussion is whether or not that is true, do we really not have access to things that can affect incorporeal creatures? I believe we do have access to things that might be able to affect them. For example it seems reasonable that weaponized lasers would be 'advanced enough to effectively be magical' and therefore would be able to affect incorporeal creatures. Devices that produce radiation such as an X-ray also seem like possible candidates for 'magical' designations. Similarly there are other weaponized systems such as particle beam, plasma, microwave, and sonic weaponry that could be advanced enough to be considered 'magical'. I think it is perfectly reasonable that we could pretty quickly find multiple means to combat shades and ghosts.

Another random interesting question is would real world poisons be subjected to d&d rules of poisons? The poisons of d&d are dramatically weaker than what poisons are in the real world so it would be interesting to see how our poisons would be effected by d&d universe interaction.