Clearing a megadungeon without ever entering

[chaincomplex]

So for another thought experiment I'm curious what tools the 20th-level Wizard has to do an adventure without, well, ever physically being there. Let's say our lazy wizard doesn't want to leave their Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion but still wants to clear out a megadungeon. So far I've gone through the obvious options in the SRD:


Summon monster: too short, but with wish to transport summons they can do things like retrieve artifacts or do quick hits.
Planar binding and gate: works but potentially dangerous because bound or gated creatures probably don't appreciate it.
Astral projection: the best tool naturally, with the caveat that though your body may not be at the site of adventure literally and figuratively your spirit is there, which kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise.
Wish: combined with scrying spells you can do really funny things with wish's ability to transport to and from any location on any plane. You don't have to physically be in a place to scry a place and then wish hostiles away to some death trap, like the Sun or the Negative Energy Plane.
Demand and dominate: can get others to clear a place for you, with the downside of creating long-term enemies. Not ideal. Demand is nice enough that it may get dungeon denizens to do all the hard work for you, but that's pretty situational.
Simulacrum and ice assassin: 👌 solutions
Hiring adventurers: OK but I'm a wizard, why am I using diplomacy to solve problems when I reign supreme with magic.

I would appreciate any other suggestions to this effect. I had an idea that maybe one could turn the detect spells that function through scrying into damaging or utility spells through metamagic shenanigans, but I can't work out how.

[Telonius]

If the dungeon is underground, there's always the classic, "Ten Decanters of Endless Water" solution. Set them to geyser, sit back, and wait until everything in the dungeon drowns. (You would need a couple of hirelings to set them up, if you literally didn't want to leave your pocket dimension).

[Jack_Simth]

Greater Scrying and metamagic cantrips: Viable, theoretically. Snowcasting (make it cold), Flash Frost (add a little damage to a cold spell), Fell Drain (add a negative level to folks damaged by a spell) and perhaps Energy Substitution (in case of cold resistance, change elements).

Ward up a minion for maximum stealth, send it in, scry it, have it hide while you use the scrying sensor to kill everything.

There's also the Eye of Power spell if you want something a bit more direct.

[Akal Saris]

If the wizard gets access to several castings of Earthquake (such as through Arcane Disciple or UMD) they can just bring down most/all of the dungeon.

Magic Jar and Project Image can work as backups to astral projection.

[Mechalich]

So for another thought experiment I'm curious what tools the 20th-level Wizard has to do an adventure without, well, ever physically being there. Let's say our lazy wizard doesn't want to leave their Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion but still wants to clear out a megadungeon. So far I've gone through the obvious options in the SRD:

Your list doesn't include created undead or constructs, which are both tools in the wizard's bag. A 20th level wizard can create Devourers, which can eat people to SLA Lesser Planar Ally, thereby unleashing a cycle of mid-level minionomancy that's actually pretty potent.

[noob]

Guard and wards on the dungeon and then drop lots of really heavy stuff on it while people in it are confused?
Those who exits are freebies.

[QuadraticGish]

The Leadership feat provides a lot of manpower for any high level character.

[Eldan]

If the dungeon is underground, there's always the classic, "Ten Decanters of Endless Water" solution. Set them to geyser, sit back, and wait until everything in the dungeon drowns. (You would need a couple of hirelings to set them up, if you literally didn't want to leave your pocket dimension).

Step three, curse as you find out the DM made the final boss an Aboleth? :smalltongue:

[Fouredged Sword]

Undead armies.

Setting a swarm of controlled shadows will empty most dungeons if the wizard doesn't particularly care about the area around the dungeon. Get a shadow under your control and use it to farm up a proper swarm of spawn. Send them all into a dungeon to murder everything living and not immune to strength damage.

[Anthrowhale]

You could use Eye of Power with heavy metamagic since most metamagic does not increase spell level.

[MornShine]

Open a gate to the Quasielemental Plane of Void and rapidly vacate the area?

[Thurbane]

Probably not quite on the power level of what's being discussed, but using Cloudkill to fumigate dungeons used to be a thing. Whack enough metamagic on it and it could still be pretty nasty.

[Anthrowhale]

Probably not quite on the power level of what's being discussed, but using Cloudkill to fumigate dungeons used to be a thing. Whack enough metamagic on it and it could still be pretty nasty.

A variation on this is something like a Violated Wounding Flash Frost Blizzard.

[noob]

The Leadership feat provides a lot of manpower for any high level character.

In the same line, thrallherd, this way your followers do not like you less due to dying.

[Eldan]

Open a gate to the Quasielemental Plane of Void and rapidly vacate the area?

Technically, a black hole is no longer a dungeon.

[Gemini476]

If the dungeon is underground, there's always the classic, "Ten Decanters of Endless Water" solution. Set them to geyser, sit back, and wait until everything in the dungeon drowns. (You would need a couple of hirelings to set them up, if you literally didn't want to leave your pocket dimension).

300 gallons/round is "just" 48 cubic feet/round. Given the size of the popular megadungeons out there, that seems... unlikely to do anything anytime fast. Your archetypal tiny 10'x10'x10' room with an orc guarding a treasure chest will take 20 rounds, or two minutes, to fill up, and if there's open doors then there'll be plenty of time for stuff to leave.

And this is ignoring the obvious roadblocks like underground drainage (be it through interdimensional portals like in Castle Greyhawk, or underground water sources like in Castle Greyhawk, or chutes to China like... Castle Greyhawk), closed waterproof doors, the ever-popular aquatic/amphibious monster who's just squatting behind a door, undead, etc. etc.

Seriously, I'm looking at the maps for Stonehell Dungeon and not only wouldn't you flood more than half of level 1 & 2 (out of ten), but if you put the decanters at the entrance it would take over seven hours to flood level 2 to 5ft deep. And that's without assuming that someone goes to the door to check what's going on, or sets up some blockade, or whatever.


This also runs into the issue of, well, the ever-popular archetype of "the megadungeon is run by a mad epic-level wizard who dwells at the bottom".

[Jack_Simth]

Greater Scrying and metamagic cantrips: Viable, theoretically. Snowcasting (make it cold), Flash Frost (add a little damage to a cold spell), Fell Drain (add a negative level to folks damaged by a spell) and perhaps Energy Substitution (in case of cold resistance, change elements).

Ward up a minion for maximum stealth, send it in, scry it, have it hide while you use the scrying sensor to kill everything.

There's also the Eye of Power spell if you want something a bit more direct.
Oh, yes, and you can also use Fell Animate to have minions (direct via Message) to handle the things immune to your chosen energy type and/or negative levels.

[Vaern]

If the dungeon is underground, there's always the classic, "Ten Decanters of Endless Water" solution. Set them to geyser, sit back, and wait until everything in the dungeon drowns. (You would need a couple of hirelings to set them up, if you literally didn't want to leave your pocket dimension).

Depends on what's in the dungeon. Won't work on undead, constructs, aquatic/amphibious creatures, or anything that otherwise doesn't require air.

[El Dorado]

20th level wizard likely has access to, or could craft, helpful items. Mirror of mental prowess could be used to survey the levels and plan accordingly.

[MornShine]

Technically, a black hole is no longer a dungeon.

A dungeon that is no longer a dungeon is a cleared dungeon.

Get some ring gates and dump spells through them all day (ring gates have a limit based mass, but most spells don't have mass). Animate a minion on the other side if needed to keep the gate moving through the dungeon.

Find some green slime and pour it into the dungeon, feeding it to ensure it spreads. For instantaneous but less thorough results, use Brown Mold and a permanent source of fire. Or blend the two!

Symbols of Insanity/Death on a rubber ball, repeat until finished.

Stack size increases to increase the size of your magic items, then shove the entire megadungeon into a Bag of Devouring.

Sphere of Annihilation and a Ring Gate. Possibly with size increases.

Wish for every creature in the dungeon, individually, to be brought to you so you can fight them one-on-one. (Be sure to outpace the rate of reproduction!)

Transmute Rock to Mud and Disintegrate to get rid of the entire dungeon, dealing with creatures as they emerge. May take a while.

True Creation highly flammable gas in compressed, solid form.

[daremetoidareyo]

Contract lycanthropy, do the adventure in a weredog fugue

[aglondier]

Ummm...isn't that literally the premise behind half the megadungeons out there?

Creepy elusive archmage wants megadungeon emptied, party of beginning adventurers is sent in, slowly clears dungeon...

[Bohandas]

Kinetic Bombardment. Drop some really heavy stuff on it from really high up. The pentagon considered this as a superweapon (look up "rods from god") but it was too expensive. In D&D however the shrink item spell changes cost parameters. It also has a literary precedent in fantasy, in both Journey to the West and part 3 of Gulliver's Travels.

[Jack_Simth]

Kinetic Bombardment. Drop some really heavy stuff on it from really high up. The pentagon considered this as a superweapon (look up "rods from god") but it was too expensive.
VERY expensive, yes. To the point where it's less expensive to get the same size boom with conventional explosives.

How it works:
You drop a solid, heavy thing from orbit (a big steel rod with some guiding fins), when it hits the ground, it makes a very large explosion (just like a meteorite) at a location of your choosing. Nasty thing.

The catch is that to do it, you have to have the rod up there already, as well as the satellite that's controlling it. Currently, the only way to do that is rocketry - and rocketry is a very inefficient way of getting things in orbit (best we have at the moment, though). The energy output from the heavy thing hitting the ground is orders of magnitude less than the energy input you need to get the rod itself into orbit - and you'll still need something to control it. Ultimately, it's much cheaper to load that rocket fuel in an airplane, fly over them conventionally, and set the fuel on fire. A conventional bomb, really.

The way to get around that would be actual space industry: If you can get a manufacturing plant in the asteroid belt, and start lobbing your rods from there, you get past the rocketry problem (the mass is already up, so you're just harvesting existing potential energy, rather than having to create it).

Of course, with teleportation, that's not a problem, but for the kinetic bombardment to work properly, you have to introduce real world physics into D&D, and that tends not to end well.

[Bohandas]

Of course, with teleportation, that's not a problem, but for the kinetic bombardment to work properly, you have to introduce real world physics into D&D, and that tends not to end well.

You can do it at a lower level with shrink item. You shrink your 16000 pound metal rod into a 4 pound quarter staff, then toss it at someone and turn it back with the command word while it's in the air. That's hownthey did it in Journey to the West

[Endarire]

Collapse the place from the outside. It worked for the Tomb of Horrors!

[Bohandas]

If its filled with mortal creatures and doesn;t contain some kind of internal farm or magical food source then you could just collapse the entrences and eventualky the occupants would starve to death.

[YUMDM]

So for another thought experiment I'm curious what tools the 20th-level Wizard has to do an adventure without, well, ever physically being there. Let's say our lazy wizard doesn't want to leave their Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion but still wants to clear out a megadungeon. So far I've gone through the obvious options in the SRD:


Summon monster: too short, but with wish to transport summons they can do things like retrieve artifacts or do quick hits.
Planar binding and gate: works but potentially dangerous because bound or gated creatures probably don't appreciate it.
Astral projection: the best tool naturally, with the caveat that though your body may not be at the site of adventure literally and figuratively your spirit is there, which kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise.
Wish: combined with scrying spells you can do really funny things with wish's ability to transport to and from any location on any plane. You don't have to physically be in a place to scry a place and then wish hostiles away to some death trap, like the Sun or the Negative Energy Plane.
Demand and dominate: can get others to clear a place for you, with the downside of creating long-term enemies. Not ideal. Demand is nice enough that it may get dungeon denizens to do all the hard work for you, but that's pretty situational.
Simulacrum and ice assassin: 👌 solutions
Hiring adventurers: OK but I'm a wizard, why am I using diplomacy to solve problems when I reign supreme with magic.

I would appreciate any other suggestions to this effect. I had an idea that maybe one could turn the detect spells that function through scrying into damaging or utility spells through metamagic shenanigans, but I can't work out how.

I have always wanted to play a fairly high level wizard who was a member of party entering a dungeon, but isn't actually there. He simply scrys on the party and when they need him he teleports in. :)