Bombing run with D&D tech

[PanNarrans]

Ok, so our party is really quite annoyed with the nation that keeps trying to invade us in our game, so it's time for some shock and awe. We're going to bomb the hell out of their airship factories.

How can we cause the most destruction with D&D tech? We have the resources of a good-sized nation to hand. Our current plan is:

The Dread Necromancer creates rat skeletons, which then go in bags of holding. We then pour a nasty poison into the bag of holding. Poison skeletons! The skeletons explode with negative energy upon destruction, thanks to that feat in the Corpsecrafter line. Our DM has ruled that he can create skeletons without the opals, since it's a fairly high powered game.

The bags of holding are our payload; they're loaded into drop-pod/missile things. They're heavy, rifled so they'll spin, and come to a point. Airships will be dropping them onto their targets from about 3 miles up to evade defences, so they should punch straight through to the underground sections of the factories.

The impact sets off a mechanism that inverts the bag of holding, spilling out the poison rat skeletons, who go on the rampage.

We can manufacture 40 of these things in 3 days, and will load them onto 6 airships, in two strike teams of one heavy bomber and two interceptors.

How can we make this plan more effective?

No, we cannot use Fabricate to make TNT.

[9mm]

well there are a couple traditional bombs in 3.X

holy acrorns

Arcane archers with splitting bows

and bags of a item I can't remeber of the top of my head at the moment

also there's a spell that makes things explode as they die in the SpC, so loading that ontop of your skele's might also work.

[gallagher]

get a bunch of glass bottles, fill them with alcohol, place a wick made of cloth treated with wax so it doesnt burn too fast. light the wick and drop. molotov made easy!

or have a wizard that didnt choose evocation as one of his banned schools

[AtwasAwamps]

Hrmmm. Is there any reason you’re not just dumping the rats without bothering with losing the bags of holding? Dropping them from flight should set off fall damage and that should kill your average skeleton, allowing instant explosions without the possibility of shenanigans (turning, control undead/command undead from enemy clerics, etc.).

You have arcane casters and this is a high-powered game. Swoop in and throw down any number of area effect spells. Hell, grease the whole town for the fun of it. Summon monsters on top of them. You have flight, flying mounts, and magic. It’s not so much “What should we drop on them?” as “What CAN’T we drop on them?”

If you really want to have fun with the necromancer, start with the endless hellacious rat bombs and right when they think they have it figured out, drop a couple troll/ogre/dire lion skeletons/zombies on their heads…AND FOLLOW IT UP with more negative energy exploding rats. Endless exploding rats = Endless healing for the bigger skeletons which will continue to wreak havoc in the town.

[Cicciograna]

Locate City Bomb?

[Prime32]

Drop something which allows a strike team to teleport to its location. Or anything which can create spawn.

If you're in Eberron it's possible to build a coilgun out of a lightning rail.

[Ravens_cry]

Wall of Iron.
Shrink Item: Clothy Version.
Rince Lather repeat as many times as you can stuff in a bag of holding
Get real high on airship, dragon, griffon or fly spell.
Open up bag of holding, bottom facing the ground.
Dispel Shrink Item
Win War
Profit

[PanNarrans]

Is there any reason you’re not just dumping the rats without bothering with losing the bags of holding? Dropping them from flight should set off fall damage and that should kill your average skeleton, allowing instant explosions without the possibility of shenanigans (turning, control undead/command undead from enemy clerics, etc.).

So the rat skeletons get to go kill things. Rebuking from enemy clerics isn't such a problem, since the nation we're up against really can't work undead. Turning them means they run away to cause more havoc later, and destroying them through turning still sets off the negative energy bomb. Control/command undead could still be a problem, but hopefully there won't be too many clerics there.

Oh wait. As of last game, we know there are high ranking spies in our midst. There will be SO MANY clerics there.

[AtwasAwamps]

So the rat skeletons get to go kill things. Rebuking from enemy clerics isn't such a problem, since the nation we're up against really can't work undead. Turning them means they run away to cause more havoc later, and destroying them through turning still sets off the negative energy bomb. Control/command undead could still be a problem, but hopefully there won't be too many clerics there.

Oh wait. As of last game, we know there are high ranking spies in our midst. There will be SO MANY clerics there.

I guess. Just...I imagine if you're attacking a nation, they're going to be prepared for the worst, especially if there are spies. And rat skeletons are not really going to...mmm. Yeah. I dunno. In my head, I feel like it would be more useful to just get those detonations off asap, but yeah, those rats could probably eat their way through some commoners. Unless your DM says they're going to act like rat swarms, in which case that's a whole other can of worms (or bag of rats, as it were).

[PanNarrans]

New plan! This will all be handled by the artificer's homunculi, while the PCs attack somewhere else in force. Perfect distraction.

[Radar]

Instead of throwing Bags oh Holding, you can put the rats in normal bags with parachutes or Featherfall cast on them - it's much cheaper.

If you want to cause long-term damage, then drop secretly Wight squads near small settlments or trade routs with orders to hunt down any targets they have numbers superiority on. Since they will produce more Wights that way, you will likely trigger a Wightocalypse quite soon.

For something more direct, but requiring a few casters to work: Build an iron (or from some other material) sphere with a lid on top - make the size as big, as would fit in a Resilient Sphere cast by the best caster you have and it shouldn't be very thick (just enough to hold itself as it will be filled with water). Cast Wall of Fire inside the sphere and fill it with water. Quickly close the lid and cast Resilient Sphere on the whole thing, so it wouldn't break prematurly. Encase the R. Sphere in a wooden box, so it could be droped (that part is a bit iffy, but if movement isn't relative, then Immovable Rods are completly usless and would fling their users into space - planets are moving and stuff). Wall of Fire will heat the water to some significantly high temperatures (wether the R. Sphere conducts heat or not) and with the 1min/lvl duration of the R. Sphere you can give the setup enough time to ripe. Drop the box and whatch the target go boom.

Fun fact: you can shape the blast by thinning the inner sphere in specific places.

[Seffbasilisk]

Alchemist's fire. Nonmagical fire can really ruin someone's day.

I'd put in something to destroy the bags if you're dropping them.

Suspension Spheres are what I mass-rain down the last time I made a bomber.

Thunderstones to cause havoc.

Feather tokens tied to thunderstones? *thunk* *BOOM!* *tree*

[Choco]

Is there any reason you can't just bring your full force to crush them? Would another nation invade you if you put ALL your effort into crushing the uppity one? Since y'all seem to be good with undead, you should not have that hard of a time killing every last person in that other nation and making them undead footsoldiers in your ever expanding army .

First thing I would do is divination abuse to discover who the spies are. Then Mindrape them into feeding the enemy whatever you tell them to, with the added bonus of you learning everything they know. If you somehow were shown and targetted an innocent person, you can just have the mindrape do nothing but read their mind and you at least now know that individual is clear.

But back on topic... You could mass summon blue whales 3 miles up and watch the fun.

[PId6]

Have spies place Portable Holes on the top of their airship factories, then just drop/Teleport a Bag of Holding into those Holes. There goes your problem!

[Vizzerdrix]

the ballista ammo that animates dead. first drop a felldrain fireball in the slums, then one of those. This should tie up any clerics for your bombing run.

If the clerics stay at the factory, circle and drop more felldrain fireballs. Hospitals, temples, schools. The sick and the young are your targets as they have the lowest number of HP. Flood the area with uncontrolled undead.

Also the Faerun Monster Manual has a spell that turns any animal into a sort of flying lizard minion. No limit on the number you can have, just keep them out of the sunlight (A night attack). I think you can also set them up to deliver a spell. Make it Dispel Magic and give them books filled with Explosive Runes. Have them follow your bombs down through the holes and Kamikaze key targets.


And whi8le your at it, attack from under them too! Make some Effigy Mineral warrior Sharks and Giant squids to "Swim" (burrow) right up through the floor.

[Johel]

Word of Wisdom from

You can replace the bouncing ball with a adamantine shield, carried by a flying zombie boosted with Stoneskin.

[Another_Poet]

1. Either spread your bombs out among more than 2 ships or do a last minute switch as to which ship is doing which job. Spies mean the enemies will know they only have to take out the 2 bombers to avoid destruction.

2. Toss leaflets of Explosive Runes overboard.

[Vizzerdrix]

2. Toss leaflets of Felldrain Explosive Runes overboard.

A little upgrade to your masterful plan. Hope you don't mind

[The Glyphstone]

In b4 anti-osmium.


If you've already got Bag-of-Holding missile/bombs, can you get your hands on some Portable Holes? Some sort of delayed-reaction spell...a Contingent Unseen Servant, perhaps - who spawns a few rounds after the bag bomb has dispensed its cargo, and shoves the Portable Hole into the bag of Holding to create a 10-ft radius vacumn bomb.

[Drascin]

Shrink Item. Shrink Item Shrink Item Shrink Item. You can do a huge amount of damage without announcing yourself thanks to it.

Shrink huge barrels of gunpowder. Invisible caster flies above and throws them liberally. Says command word to unshrink as they fall. Crash, city covered in gunpowder. Fireball. Bam, nothing above ground survives. And it's near-impossible to see coming. Stealthbombing at its finest, which is great for shock and awe tactics - the threat of invisible death is usually rather effective. And that's just the first thing that popped to mind. I'm sure you can come up with more creative uses by devoting more than three seconds of thought to it .

Substitute for Alchemist's fire if it's easier to come by. Less brutal, but 4000 gallons of alchemist's fire exploding over the city are likely to ruin everyone's day.

[subject42]

Given your wealth, strap ring gates to the bottom of an airship, then poor feather-falled oozes and swarms through them at night.

On the second run, people on the ground can simply start dropping miscellaneous debris as quickly as they can through the gates on the ground.

[Keld Denar]

High level Dragonfire Adept with Power Surge, Heighten Breath, Enlarge Breath, Clinging Breath, Flyby Attack, and Strafing Breath, and anything that increases his speed could drop a 5-Fold Breath of Tiamat that cuts a massively wide swath about 120' long with a nearly unbeatable DC that is pretty much unsurvivable by anyone under 10th level. I'm talkin about 30-40d6 damage the first round, and then again the next round. That would probably also trash most buildings and any outdoor process equipment and/or pipelines and/or electrical conduit that may be present.

Sure, it would take him like, a full day to recover his breath, but meh, as long as the damage is done. It would take a couple weeks to repair the damage, and he could always just do it again the next day.

[Magdela]

Why not do a sabotage mission instead of a head on assault? Sneak in while your undead create a distraction, rip the airfields to shreds PC style and be gone before they know what hit them.

Bonus points if the undead end up taking a town.

[ZeroNumerous]

Locate City Bomb?

The Locate City Bomb plus the Fell Draining metamagic feat.

Have the artificer craft two 1/day intelligent items of it. Acquire necessary feats via metamagic, teleporting in those who know them or otherwise retrain as needed.

Throw Overland Flight on, fly high up above the most populated enemy city you know of.

Order the item to cast the Locate City Bomb when it gets within twenty feet of the ground.

Release.

Congratulations: You have instantly killed 99% of the population of that city. Every single one of the dead will rise as wights within 24 hours. The remaining 01%(those of level 2 or higher) will either be devastated beyond imagining(everyone around you just instantly dropped dead in the middle of whatever they're doing for no apparent reason) or consumed by the following wight horde.

Wait three-to-seven days to allow for news to travel.

Inform the enemy you can replicate that catastrophe as often as necessary to win.

???

Profit.

[Beorn080]

All this seems rather silly. I recommend a different route.

You said you can't Minor Create TNT. That suggests that you have both tried and the DM has prevented you from doing so. Fine. Two other suggestions.

Thermite. Iron Oxide powder + Aluminum powder + flame = massive heat. X cubic feat of each, well, it gets hot. My recommendation, fill a BoH with the mixture, light it, and fling it into town via catapult. SOMEONE will open it, and the heat, which has had no where to go, will pour out.

Minor create extracts of the Coca leaf. Use Gust of wind downwind of the city. Make fortune selling to the now addicted populace.

[subject42]

How high level are you and does your DM allow for retraining?

It would only take one angry druid to turn most cities into blasted nightmare craters.

[AtwasAwamps]

High level Dragonfire Adept with Power Surge, Heighten Breath, Enlarge Breath, Clinging Breath, Flyby Attack, and Strafing Breath, and anything that increases his speed could drop a 5-Fold Breath of Tiamat that cuts a massively wide swath about 120' long with a nearly unbeatable DC that is pretty much unsurvivable by anyone under 10th level. I'm talkin about 30-40d6 damage the first round, and then again the next round. That would probably also trash most buildings and any outdoor process equipment and/or pipelines and/or electrical conduit that may be present.

Sure, it would take him like, a full day to recover his breath, but meh, as long as the damage is done. It would take a couple weeks to repair the damage, and he could always just do it again the next day.

If he's using five-fold breath, doesn't he take half the damage it deals after using it?

So it wouldn't be so much "a full day to recover" as "a quick trip to the afterlife and back"?

[Learnedguy]

Using Bags of Holding isn't logistically feasible, and your ammunition of choice might be a bit to volatile for my own liking.

Personally, I think kinetic ammunition is your best shot. What you want is something that'll move fast and have a high mass enough to generate an impact capable of one-shotting a factory. I think this is feasible using shrink object and some momentum-altering magic (dunno what spell though).

You also need a delivery method with a high likelihood of success. A single airship might get shot down. Rather that you brought twenty.

[Beorn080]

Logistically, an airship is too much. UNLESS you mount multiple create food traps all over the hull, autoreset of course. Bury their city in a flood of muffins. Bland muffins.

[Telonius]

Special item from Shackled City: a room with about 20 jars that are trapped with Wail of the Banshee; triggers when the jar is opened.

The players figured it out, and just took the jars and secured them. They tied them to a Hippogriff (special mount of one of the characters). The character used the Hippogriff as a bomber, cutting off a jar whenever he wanted to bomb something.