How would YOU conquer Hell?

[bigbaddragon]

Good Cleric + Holy Word? Nongood creatures with 15 HD (16 HD with good domain) or less die immediately.

Are there ways to pump up caster level for divine spellcasting like you can pump up CL for arcane spellcasting (stuff like ring of arcane mastery but for divine spells)?

[TheLogman]

Oh, I have a third idea. Those Devil Guys are like Lawful right? I think so. If they are lawful, then they would probably obey the rules and laws of economics. So, here's the way to take over the Hells with the best and most powerful force ever, economics!

Choose an item that is fairly uncommon in the area, a certain type or rock, or a creature or something, there are quite a few, but they are limited in number. Advertise you are selling some item that makes the Devils more powerful, any magic item really. Ask in return 5 of said item. Continue the sales until you have all the rocks. Now, advertise a rarer item, but demand the same Rocks or whatever. Now, the Devils have an item they really want, but they have no way to get more rocks. So, they ask you how to get rocks. Tell them you will write up a contract. The contract details stuff that basically demands loyalty, or their allegiance in a fight. Eventually, the Devils are trading the rocks among themselves, and you've created a currency. Now, once you have enough Devil contracts, demand that you are cashing in said contracts, and have them kill the leader, who they probably don't like much anyway. Continue until all the Devil lords are dead.

[Kizara]

Alright, new plan.
4 people you say?
Alright. 4 Wizards. Greater Teleport so they're directly next to Asmodeus.
Quickened Shapechange into Chronotyryns, followed by Maximised Time Stop.
Each Wizard can then cast 20 Maximised Enervations (10 normal, 10 Quickened), which gives 80 negative levels. Each.
Then, take his scepter, the Ruby Rod of Asmodeus.
Now you control Baator. Congratulations.

Ever heard of forbiddance?

And as to the OP, if its your first time ever playing D&D, start a weee bit smaller and work your way up would be my suggestion.

Make lvl 1-3 characters, make an adventure, explore it. Realize as you and your players learn the system the first 2-3 campaigns may be write-offs.

Once you have learned the system, you can look at bigger stuff. Look, DMing a mid-level game (lvl 8-13) can be challanging enough, let alone an EPIC one. As with anything, the more variables something has the more complex and therefore more unstable it is. Epic play, with the most variables (levels, accessible abilities, possible combinations) is the most unstable and therefore generally the most broken level of play.


To the logman: The devil's kill you and take all your silly rocks. LOL, you think Devil's play fair or give a crap about what you are aksing? Your rock-merchant needs POWER or nobody is going to CARE what price you are asking, they just are going to take it.

[Jack_Simth]

First off: you realize that, by definition, anything that makes this possible will be cheesy, right?

Epic Spells!

Party of four, everyone's a full caster (We have a Sorcerer, Wizard, Cleric, and Druid), everyone has Epic Spell casting, everyone has Leadership, everyone has a full caster cohort (Wizard, Cleric, or Druid - no Sorcerers, as we need them to have 9th level spell slots). I'm ignoring the cheese that comes with caster followers (for now, at least).

With 3 Epic spell slots contributed (party), and 4 9th level spell slots contributed (Cohorts), that's a mitigating factor of -125 right off the bat. An extra 8 minutes casting time (9 minutes total) puts that to -141.

Summon is base DC 14, giving a CR 2 or less outsider for 20 rounds (two minutes). +2 DC for each +1 CR. Permanent is *5, after enhancements but before mitigation. So for a Permanent Summon, we're looking at DC 70, +10 DC for each +1 CR. At -141 from time and slots, we can mitigate a CR 12 Outsider down to DC 0 (-1, technically - which also means no development gp cost, no development XP cost, and no development time). Thereafter, we have an outsider thrall. What do we pick? A Couatl. CR 10 Outsider, casts as a Sorcerer-9 - which means it has four 4th level spell slots each day.

Now, we can pull this spell off twice per day (initially - cheese WILL follow), and each casting summons another Couatl to contribute a 4th level spell slot - which is a mitigating factor of -7. We pick up two on the first day.

Once we have ten of them (five days), we research another epic spell that assumes we'll have ten Sorcerer-9's willing to donate 4th level spell slots. So we've got 3 donated Epic spell slots (3*-19), four cohorts donating 9th level spell slots (4*-17), and ten Couatl's donating 4th level spell slots (10*-7), and we still take an extra 8 minutes on the casting (8*-2) for a mitigation DC of -211. We make a different Permanent Summon. We're looking for a CR 16 outsider (DC (14(Base)+14*2 (Base CR 2, +14 CR))*5=210). What do we take? A Planetar. Casts as a Cleric-17, for 9th level spell slots, for a -17 mitigating factor each. Again, we can still do this twice per day (all casters have at least two of their highest-level spell slots). We have two of them on the end of day 6.

Each Planetar adds a 9th level spell slot, and we're getting them at two per day. After seven days of this (day 12) we have 14 Planetars. At this point, we have, for each Epic spell:
3 donated Epic spell slots (3*-19) from party members.
4 donated 9th level spell slots (4*-17) from Cohorts.
10 "donated" 4th level spell slots (10*-7) from Couatls.
14 "donated" 9th level spell slots (14*-17) from Planetars.

This gives us a mitigating factor of -433.

Now we look at another clause of Summon: You can double the DC to summon another critter of the same CR. So we research another DC 0 (technically, DC -13) Epic Spell to Permanently Summon two Planetars per casting. We can still do this twice per day; now we get four Planetars per day, Permanently.

After another three days (Day 15), we've got another 12 Planetars (for a total of 26. This gives us yet another -204 in Mitigation, for a total of -637; at which point, we can add a third Planetar into the Summoning mix, which we can still cast twice per day (thanks to D&D Maths, with the listed order of operations (Permanent last, but before mitigation), a Permanent Three Planetar Summon has a pre-mitigation DC of 630). We now pick up Planetars at the rate of six per day. After two days (day 17), we're in range of adding a few minutes to the casting to make it a four-Planetar summon.

We keep this up as long as we feel like - and it's exponential growth. On day 365 (one year), we can mitigate a DC of approximately 3.7*10^25 to 0. On day 730 (two years), we can mitigate a DC of approximately 2.27*10^49 to 0.

What's the Epic DC to destroy a plane in its entirety? Shouldn't be that hard.....

Edit:
Dang it! You edited while I was posting....

Well, if you've got a party of four, and you want to do it in an adventure fashion, it's basically up to the DM. However you pull it off, you're essentially running a series of nine raids (one for each demon lord), or a series of nine infinite wars (to clean out the planes) in a basic search and destroy.

[Citizen Joe]

Alright, new plan.
4 people you say?
Alright. 4 Wizards. Greater Teleport so they're directly next to Asmodeus.
Quickened Shapechange into Chronotyryns, followed by Maximised Time Stop.
Each Wizard can then cast 20 Maximised Enervations (10 normal, 10 Quickened), which gives 80 negative levels. Each.
Then, take his scepter, the Ruby Rod of Asmodeus.
Now you control Baator. Congratulations.

1: Greater Teleport does NOT allow for interplanar travel, plus you need to know where Asmodeus IS not just 'next to Asmodeus'.
2: I'm not entirely sure that Asmodeus is vulnerable to energy drains

[TheLogman]

But, at some point, each Devil is really a businessman aren't they?

@Kizara Anyway, you forget these guys are level 25, and there are 4 of them right? Making deals with low level Devils that you could kill easily would be easy, even a CR 25 Devil would back off since at least one of you is a Wizard. There is power in numbers, even if each individual is weaker than you.

[13_CBS]

So is this simply not possible to pull off without slipping into cheese? Surely there's some way of taking out Baator without getting cheesy.

[Callos_DeTerran]

1: Greater Teleport does NOT allow for interplanar travel, plus you need to know where Asmodeus IS not just 'next to Asmodeus'.
2: I'm not entirely sure that Asmodeus is vulnerable to energy drains

Not to mention you wouldn't be able to cast enveneration at Asmodeus while in this maximized time stop. Read the spell, don't just assume it will win you a battle cause your casting devastating spells during it.

[Emperor Tippy]

So is this simply not possible to pull off without slipping into cheese? Surely there's some way of taking out Baator without getting cheesy.

No there isn't.

The demons have been fighting them for thousands of years and haven't even made a dent. The good gods haven't managed to find a way to boot Asmodeus out.

A single level 25 wizard could do it though, thanks to epic casting cheese.

It can actually be done at level 8 do to gate cheese can the candle of invocation.

[TheLogman]

Dude, Baator is a freaking Plane or bigger. It has an infinite number of Devils, and a leader with Infinity-1000 power. Each Level of Hell's leader is 100 stronger, so the most powerful one has Infinity-100 power. Asking us to do this is like asking us to put out and cool off the entire Plane of Fire, to 10 degrees Celsius, without doing anything of near infinite power.

[13_CBS]

I see. No point in this thread, then.

[Callos_DeTerran]

So is this simply not possible to pull off without slipping into cheese? Surely there's some way of taking out Baator without getting cheesy.

To be perfectly honest, if the DM is playing Devil's how they should be played....No, not really. Devils are the most coniving creatures in all the planes and the most organized evil force. Their lead by some of the craftiest and powerful creatures in existence (Lets not include the Far Realm here). Baator has survived countless assaults from the infinite hoards of the Abyss and the Upper Planes and will survive many more (with a finite number of devils nonetheless). Not to mention (Depending on which devil inspired lie your going by) their very existence is sanctioned by the laws of reality. They are legally certified to exist. Mounting an assault on the Nine Hells is tantamount to suicide at most levels, and even if you somehow manage to succede then you'll most likely return home to find everything you ever loved destroyed and defiled because their just that spiteful.

[Jack_Simth]

So is this simply not possible to pull off without slipping into cheese? Surely there's some way of taking out Baator without getting cheesy.

Well, you can, but not reliably, and not without making highly specific assumptions on the builds for the demon lords, the layout of their fortresses, the layouts of the planes, how they surround themselves with minions, and so forth.

[Bassetking]

I could produce a build that could, theoretically, deal enough damage to each of the Nine Hells, individually, to utterly, totally, completely destroy them...

And I could do it Pre-Epic, and without any spell-casting beyond level 1, and a way to get onto the plane.

I'm just really not certain how I would manage extraction of the PC's after the event, whether or not they would survive, or if the complete dissolution of the Hell would count as a victory under the exercise.

[TheLogman]

On the subject of destroying Hell, if any of you guys own the Tome of Magic, there is a Vestige (Creature that either went insane, was extremely powerful, or a god that something bad happened to) that was a Solar of Epic Strength. She was assigned the quest to destroy all evil. She started with the 9 Hells. Anyone wanna guess why she became a vestige? The answer is not the second or third way of becoming a vestige if you need a hint.

Oh, and basset, we know how smart and rules savvy you are, please oh please tell us your secrets? Does it involve Genesis? There's an idea, destory each plane with Genesis, make the places a void of nothing, it may take a few years to get the Anit-Genesis big enough, but you could always make another, or two, or five-hundred.

[Emperor Tippy]

I'm guessing its the infinite damage build.

[NEO|Phyte]

Ok, I think I can do this...

PC 1: Warblade 15/BloodStorm Blade 10. Important grabs: Point-Blank Shot, Far Shot, Distant Shot, Blood in the Water.

PCs 2-4: As high CHA as possible, Leadership, Epic Leadership, Legendary Commander, make at least 1 of them a Sorcerer with the needed spells to get to/from Baator.

Gear: Lets say PC 1 is using a +1 Keen Falchion for this little adventure, along with whatever armor and gear would be needed to survive in the hells. PCs 2-4 have similar survival gear, and have scrolls of (Greater) Planeshift and Greater teleport.

How it works:
PCs 2-4 gather all of their followers onto a nice featureless plane/plain, such that PC 1 is able to see all of them. PC 1 activates his Blood in the Water stance if he hasn't already, then next turn, uses a swift action to activate Thunderous Throw, then uses a Full-round action to use Blade Storm, attacking ALL of PCs 2-4's followers for nonlethal damage. Since the vast majority of these followers are level 1, odds are PC 1 is only missing on a one. His threat range is 15-20, and on confirm rolls, he is similarly only missing on a one, meaning there is a 23.75% chance that any given attack is a critical hit, if my math is correct. If the leadership score of the other PCs is only 30, that makes 9000 first level followers, and an average of 2137.5 crits. Thanks to Blood in the Water, each of these crits has given PC 1 a stacking untyped +1 bonus to attack and damage, that will last until a minute passes without PC 1 landing a crit. At this point, they Planeshift into Baator, and start moving as quickly as possible towards the first target, pausing at regular intervals for PC 1 to ginsu up some Devils and maintain the BitW bonus. This continues until he can see one of the primary targets, at which point he unleashes full attacks until an attack hits and most probably vaporizes the victim. Repeat as needed. If the BitW bonus is lost, return to the followers and make another masswhack at them for nonlethal.

[Bassetking]

I'm guessing its the infinite damage build.

Tippy is correct in his assumption about it being the 1d2 Crusader; the question becomes as follows.

"Were I to physically attack, say... Nessus, as a plane, could I infer the damage I dealt upon the plane in my infinite quantity"?

More succinctly... Can I hit the Ground? Could I deal my damage to the plane as an object?

These questions stray DEEPLY into the realm of DM Fiat, as there is little to no crunch designed around the mechanics of dealing with massive assaults against landscape, or, more aptly, the mechanics of handling damage in infinite quantities.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Maybe you folks can find a way to defeat Asmodeus. I doubt a DM would let you get away with anything easy, as Asmodeus of all beings would see it coming, but maybe you can.

The real question is, can anyone defeat Invisible Christopher Walken?

[Ninja Chocobo]

1: Greater Teleport does NOT allow for interplanar travel, plus you need to know where Asmodeus IS not just 'next to Asmodeus'.
2: I'm not entirely sure that Asmodeus is vulnerable to energy drains

1. I assumed that the party was already on the plane. Where Asmodeus is can easily be obtained with various divination spells.

2. Hm. I must have missed that bit in FCII.

Not to mention you wouldn't be able to cast enveneration at Asmodeus while in this maximized time stop. Read the spell, don't just assume it will win you a battle cause your casting devastating spells during it.

I don't see why I can't cast Enervation during a Time Stop. I mean, I've got the actions.

[Jack Mann]

You have the actions. But you cannot attack or target anyone with spells while you are in the timestop. Timestop doesn't work that way. Re-read the spell description.

[Ninja Chocobo]

You have the actions. But you cannot attack or target anyone with spells while you are in the timestop. Timestop doesn't work that way. Re-read the spell description.

...
How, exactly, did I miss that? I must've read that...*counts on fingers*...a LOT of times.
I'm going to go hang my head in shame, now.

[AtomicKitKat]

Asmodeus is so lamely overcheesed that fighting him is like unto fighting a God that you cannot kill. Frankly, I'm sick and tired of that arrogant aristocratic ass being in charge. If he's ever disposed of, the Abyss should rule.

[Armads]

Tippy is correct in his assumption about it being the 1d2 Crusader; the question becomes as follows.

Eh? All I heard of was the crusader who used a small shruiken, but that doesn't work, because you don't roll the dice. It's not a d1, it's 1.

[Emperor Tippy]

Eh? All I heard of was the crusader who used a small shruiken, but that doesn't work, because you don't roll the dice. It's not a d1, it's 1.

Check out the best power builds thread.

[Armads]

Ah, I see.

Complete Champion makes everything better!

[Dragonmuncher]

Asmodeus is so lamely overcheesed that fighting him is like unto fighting a God that you cannot kill. Frankly, I'm sick and tired of that arrogant aristocratic ass being in charge. If he's ever disposed of, the Abyss should rule.

Well, that's what this fine group of individuals is trying to do! Don't just say "someone should do something about it!" Take a stand! Be a man! Et cetera and so forth!


For my money, Asmo is probably just stressed. He's been worshipped and feared by countless legions for millenia, and that puts a lot of pressure on a guy. If you give him a hug and a few kind words he'll probably chill out a bit.

[AtomicKitKat]

I'm not saying it's impossible, but the number one priority for anyone looking to take on Asmodeus should be Mental Immunity. Dominate at will is no joke, and if he manages to make even 1 member of your proposed party turn on you(this includes followers, incidentally), you're screwed.

[Bassetking]

Eh? All I heard of was the crusader who used a small shruiken, but that doesn't work, because you don't roll the dice. It's not a d1, it's 1.

In my original offering to the WotC Theoretical Optimization boards(Infinite Damage Melee Build or How I Learned To Stop Worrying, and Love the Shuriken), Armads, that was, in fact, the means I attempted to use. With the advent of Complete Champion, and, indeed, the Imbued Healing: Luck feat, the build becomes both RAW and RAI Airtight, with the use of a 1d2 weapon.

[Ditto]

Or, you could just ask Invisible Christopher Walken to make him step down.