Locate City-ocalypse

[Eloel]

We all know the general idea of the Locate City bomb. Stacking metamagic feats to add damage to a spell, and then add Explosive for some questionable killing.

That's when I started wondering about the effectiveness. Can't we just add Fell Drain to it, for wightocalypse? Or even, add Fell Animate to it, and control some of them too!

[Kobold-Bard]

We all know the general idea of the Locate City bomb. Stacking metamagic feats to add damage to a spell, and then add Explosive for some questionable killing.

That's when I started wondering about the effectiveness. Can't we just add Fell Drain to it, for wightocalypse? Or even, add Fell Animate to it, and control some of them too!

I vaguely recall someone making this suggestion before. But since the LCN apparently doesn't work, it's irrelevant.

I'm sure others will explain why, I've never understood why it did/didn't work.

[MickJay]

Explosive effect doesn't work, due to "circle" (rather than "sphere") area of effect of Locate City. It would work if the spell was not relying on explosive effect (e.g. with fell drain).

[GreyVulpine]

I vaguely recall someone making this suggestion before. But since the LCN apparently doesn't work, it's irrelevant.

I'm sure others will explain why, I've never understood why it did/didn't work.

See this GiTP forum post.

Basically Locate City denotes an area which is a circle. A circle isn't a 3-dimensional effect, so metamagiking it with explosive spell technically won't do anything.

Edit: Ninja'd!

[Signmaker]

Basically Locate City denotes an area which is a circle. A circle isn't a 3-dimensional effect, so metamagiking it with explosive spell technically won't do anything.

Edit: Ninja'd!

Oh noes! I've been shunted off this two-dimensional plane! I bounce like an inch off the ground.

[Random832]

Explosive effect doesn't work, due to "circle" (rather than "sphere") area of effect of Locate City. It would work if the spell was not relying on explosive effect (e.g. with fell drain).

Which is often dismissed as the "locate city can't actually locate cities" defense.

For the purpose of a homebrew class I made a while back, I decided to interpret a 'circle' in the geographic sense as meaning "usque ad coelum et ad inferos" [i.e. an infinitely tall cylinder if the world is flat, or an infinitely tall cone centered at the center of the world if it is spherical]. Now, that was for a class that specifically required it to work, but it is a legitimate interpretation nonetheless.

Besides, a cone AOE isn't three-dimensional by RAW either, but no-one would argue that explosive cone of cold doesn't work.

[Signmaker]

Besides, a cone AOE isn't three-dimensional by RAW either, but no-one would argue that explosive cone of cold doesn't work.

It's a three-dimensional by logic, being a cone. A circle is, and always has been, two-dimensional. Interpret circular effects as you will, that is still interpretation, which means that there is no RAW to it (or lack of sufficient amounts of RAW), therefore there is no sufficiently RAW way to handle the Locate City Nuke favorably.

RAWWWHIDE. =P

[flabort]

Well, there IS a metamagic (or was it metabreath?) feat in... what was it, Races of Dragon?... called Round Space, that caused a circle area to be treated as a sphere with the same radius centered around the same point. If it was metabreath, i think there was another feat that allowed you to treat a spell as breath, but i'm not so certain on that one.

[Random832]

It's a three-dimensional by logic, being a cone.

It is explicitly defined in the SRD as "a quarter circle".

[Eloel]

I'm 'not' trying to apply Explosive Spell, so drop it please. What I'm trying to do is adding Fell Drain, after Born of Three Thunders, so everyone in the area gets a negative level. Being a circle, it might mean that only the lowest-floor is affected on multi-story buildings, but that's enough to imprison people in undead-infected buildings.

[Signmaker]

I'm 'not' trying to apply Explosive Spell, so drop it please. What I'm trying to do is adding Fell Drain, after Born of Three Thunders, so everyone in the area gets a negative level. Being a circle, it might mean that only the lowest-floor is affected on multi-story buildings, but that's enough to imprison people in undead-infected buildings.

The Wight-o-pocalypse? Previous threads are here, and here(ish).

Yes. =)