Magical tank

[Empyreal Dragon]

Currently I'm involved in some hybrid between an optimization challenge, a long running campaign, and playtesting for kingdom running system.


And after seeing the most recent optimization in the playground, I got inspired to enhance my military with mechanized cavalry, aka. Tanks.


So I turn to you play grounders for assistance.


Ideal goals would be to exceed speed of a human at a full running speed, be able to handle damage from mailmen sorcerers, uberchargers, siege weapon builds and thrown weapon builds.


While dealing out enough damage to sufficiently tear down strongholds, kill high level enemies, and generally be a huge pain in the neck.


So.... ideas?

[Doctor Despair]

Golems might fit the bill, I'd think.

[Empyreal Dragon]

Technically yes, but I'd prefer an actual tank?


The current idea is some kind of obdurium structure, with speedy wheels, a cold fire engine, a lightning turbine, and then some kind of siege weapon for the main gun.

[noob]

Technically yes, but I'd prefer an actual tank?


The current idea is some kind of obdurium structure, with speedy wheels, a cold fire engine, a lightning turbine, and then some kind of siege weapon for the main gun.

Too frail to uberchargers since they have like 10^10 damage
Mailmen sorcerers can exceed 1000 damage and it can not be countered by amf so you need an obdurium structure that is absurdly heavy if you want to avoid core drilling.
So simply do the trivial solution: use an animated object that uses(thanks to UMD) an item that grants troll blooded then since they have regeneration and are constructs they are immune to damage.
Then give them an arbitrarily big gun(but then the whole setup is super easy to kill with dispell magic on the magic item that grants troll blooded) or at will time stop and some at will damage spells.
They will cost a lot but the point is that they do hit and run and so are not on the battlefield but have killed all damage vulnerable opponents in the universe in a turn but it will still die after a scry and die.

Or simply use riverine: it is made of forcefields so immunised to damage(still can be destroyed with disintegrate) and layer the riverine a whole lot (like a few hundred separated layers)

[Doctor Despair]

Too frail to uberchargers since they have like 10^10 damage
Mailmen sorcerers can exceed 1000 damage and it can not be countered by amf so you need an obdurium structure that is absurdly heavy if you want to avoid core drilling.
So simply do the trivial solution: use an animated object that uses(thanks to UMD) an item that grants troll blooded then since they have regeneration and are constructs they are immune to damage.
Then give them an arbitrarily big gun(but then the whole setup is super easy to kill with dispell magic on the magic item that grants troll blooded) or at will time stop and some at will damage spells.
They will cost a lot but the point is that they do hit and run and so are not on the battlefield but have killed all damage vulnerable opponents in the universe in a turn but it will still die after a scry and die.

Or simply use riverine: it is made of forcefields so immunised to damage(still can be destroyed with disintegrate) and layer the riverine a whole lot (like a few hundred separated layers)

Regeneration requires you to have a con score to function

[noob]

Regeneration requires you to have a con score to function

Sorry I believed umd allowed to simulate a con score for magical items but it turns out it is only for scrolls for con based casting classes.

[Fouredged Sword]

GO straight to Riverine from Stormwrack. It's immune to HP damage. Make a riverine shell that's very very thin to save weight (and thus cost). The material is immune to damage so it's fine to make paper thin. Put in a door that latches from the inside and the life support system of your choosing, so something to provide air and a ring of sustenance. Connect the shell to a flying item of your choice, so magic carpet or broom of flying or whatever. The shell is light weight due to being paper thin so it's safe.

Congratulations, you have a flying vehicle that's immune to damage and blocks line of effect to the driver. All the mailmen and uberchargers and siege weapons will be frustrated by the fact that you ignore HP damage.

Now coat the outside of your ride with an AMF. The shell blocks line of effect so you don't get effected by it inside the shell. Now you have blocked the limited set of spells that can unmake riverine.

Now, how you make the vehicle and the weapon system are one and the same. You want a fiend of possession Rejkar controlled by someone with HD>10 and the cold domain. It can make the shell using it's SLA fabricate and then turn around and use the SLA fabricate to crush your enemies with 50 cubic foot blocks of adamantine weighing 20,000lbs each.

[Psyren]

1) Find a tanklike construct that fits your needs
2) Use PF's Construct Armor rules to make it function as pilotable power armor or a vehicle
3) Add modificiations to enhance further and deal with more powerful opponents
4) ???
5) Profit

[ExLibrisMortis]

This thread has some info on telekinetic sphere-based tanks. They're not fast, and they require some high-level manifesting, but they're still nice.

[Vaern]

Apparatus of the Crab is probably the closest thing existing in official sources. Maybe just tweak that a bit and replace the pincers with a turret that fires force missiles or something.

[Kayblis]

If you want a cool rules base to craft such a thing, look into Stronghold Builder's Guide. You may ask "but that's for castles and towers!", and you may be right, but I'd like to point out that the minimum size for a structure, 1 unit, is actually very functional as a tank-like vehicle, and you can build it with different movement modes like dragging on ground, rolling on threads, wakling on structural legs, floating and many others. In fact, you can make it out of special materials like Obdurium, and enchant it to be as durable as possible. There are even rules for repeating traps and defensive contraptions, so you can have one as a giant cannon in the middle.

It's honestly a great book, and you can make a pretty kickass Tank out of it.

[noob]

In pathfinder there is a preserved brain piloting a tank that as a whole is a single creature.
Add whatever is needed to make it unkillable and you have a magical tank.

[Unavenger]

In pathfinder there is a preserved brain piloting a tank that as a whole is a single creature.
Add whatever is needed to make it unkillable and you have a magical tank.

Noob is talking about the Animated Tank from the Rasputin Must Die! adventure path.

[Thurbane]

Wasn't there a commoner build that flew around in a flying, impregnable cube?

For something a little less TO, Halfing War-Wagon (AE&G p.57) might be a good place to start, then bulk it up with mods, magic and special materials?

[BlackOnyx]

On the off chance you're looking at what might be possible at lower levels of play (or with limited resources), the Arms & Equipment Guide covers a lot of the basics for vehicle based combat and mundane upgrades.


For low level magical propulsion/animation, the Effigy Creature (Complete Arcane) and Elder Eidolon (Lords of Madness) templates can (potentially) be used as soon as someone picks up the Craft Construct feat. As far as sizeable, permanent constructs go, they're some of the cheapest around.


Haunt Shift is a fifth level spell, but it can also be used to animate objects to do your bidding and move/think on their own accord.

[Thurbane]

For creature based options, there's Juggernaut (MM2 p.132) and Waste Crawler (Sandstorm p.191), if you can somehow ride in them...

For low level magical propulsion/animation, the Effigy Creature (Complete Arcane) and Elder Eidolon (Lords of Madness) templates can (potentially) be used as soon as someone picks up the Craft Construct feat. As far as sizeable, permanent constructs go, they're some of the cheapest around.

Hmm, an Elder Eidolon Siege Beetle or Siege Crab would be interesting...

[Empyreal Dragon]

Stronghold builders guide might be a good starting point. Maybe 4 stronghold spaces for a SUPER heavy tank. The world record build for ubercharger damage is a max of 3996 damage without crit for the first hit.


But going through stronghold builders guide I noticed something interesting. For layered walls, or in A&EG, for armor plating. Both of which apply here, hardness is applied separately to each distinct layer, but HP is totalled up. So keeping that in mind, despite how most people do it. Putting all your obdurium, adamantine, and riverine in distinct layers is actually not a good idea, instead you want to sandwich that stuff up in alternating layers to maximize hardness.


With that in mind, consider the red wizards of thay as a base of the magical support for this. Keeping them in mind. Circle magic can get a caster level of 40, good in and of itself, but with consumptive field and greater consumptive field, we're assuming you cannot continue to alternate them for this, you can have a castle level of 90. We'll get to the purpose of that shortly.


Now, pure ore and oerthmetal both double the hardness of a material, normally multipliers dont stack fully, but since these can explicitly be added on to another material, by adding pure ore to oerth metal, we double the result of oerthmetal, in this case applied to obdurium.

That gives us 120 base hardness. And 180 HP for an inch of thickness. But we want more. So.... matter manipulation is a high level psionic power, but it can allow a solid +5 hardness, and +15 HP.
Then we add on the hardening spell using that ridiculous caster level for +45 hardness.

This leaves us with 170 hardness and 195 HP per inch. After using augment object, we have 340 hardness and 390 HP.


Repeating the process with adamantine nets us 340 HP, and 260 hardness. Alternating layers 14 inches thick can give us frontal armor with a total of 4200 hardness to punch through. And with +47 to saves, a caster needs an ability modifier of +31 to punch through even with disintegrate. Removing the normal weakness of armor plating.


Further adding on to this, the 22ft movement that stronghold allows us is.... not ideal. So. We're going to improve on this. Our stronghold is also a vehicle, so we're going to construct it with a cold fire engine. On it's own it allows 80 foot movement. By adding on speedy wheels to the contraption, we have 90 foot movement. After adding a lightning gearbox to our engine, and using wondrous architecture to put a storm in the engine room, that gives us 180 foot movement. Putting us past even a horse at full run by 10 feet.


At our size, we can very easily mount a great bombard as a main gun for 6d10 damage. If we use shrink item and self loading enchantment on the ammo and the gun respectively, we have 24d10 damage with two full round actions to load and fire. Necessitating two gunners to constantly delay their initiative to ensure firing every time the "tank"has a turn. Using adamantine cannonball means we ignore hardness


A secondary gun equipped with a dwarven stonebow fires 14d6 shots, which for our purposes is almost always rusting, and given three alchemical weapon capsules loaded with dither bombs in case of similar armored opposition, firmly destroying most vehicles and occasionally fortresses in a single shot.


Can we improve this further? And what are some things to look out for vulnerability wise?

[Morty_Jhones]

erm.... will this do? built using the Arms and equimpment guid. you could sawap out the balista for a cannon for 1000gp but i desined it to use a self loading Arbalist for rapid charicter killing.

Warroir Armoured Car
Huge Vehicle
66,800gp Vehical cost
135,000gp Magic Cost

total 201,800gp market price.

Handel animal +6

Speed 70ft (clumsy)

Overall AC 3

Hull AC 3
Hull Hp 100 (hardness 5)
Armour Outer Hp 15 (hardness 10)
Armoured Frame Hp 10 (hardness 5)
Crew 1
Turret
AC 3
Turret Hp 50 (hardness 5)
Armour Outer Hp 15 (hardness 10)
Armoured Frame Hp 10 (hardness 5)
Crew 2-3

Attack

Arbalist
Solder +2 (-4 aim penalty)
dam 3d8+2 +ammo mod
1 full round actions to reload
60 rounds carried (no cargo)

or

Cannon
solder +0 (Dc 15 Int test or take further -2 per range inc)
Dam 10d6+2 +ammo mod
6 move actions to reload.
30 rounds carried (inc powder, no cargo)

Ram 9d6 (ram plate - Half damage in initiated rams)

Face 10ft by 10ft
Height 15ft

Crew 3 (1 dirver,2 Artilery)
Cargo 1000lb

Weight 6000 lb

Build if needed

Mobile Redoubt - 1500gp

Vehical Augmentations

Armour Plaiting - 3000lb - 3000gp
1" Darkwood Amour 10 hp, Hardness 5
1/2" Iron Plating 15 hp, Hardness 10

Artillery Mounting - 1500lb - 500gp
MW balista - 800gp
+1 Self loading 3000gp
or
Mw Breach loader cannon 1800gp (price shifted from D&D Past)
+1 Self loading 3000gp

Rotating Platform - 500lb - 500gp
Doubles crew requirments for Balista

Self Propelled - 132,000gp

Speedy Wheels - 20lb - 100gp

Extra Capacity - 1000lb - 500gp

Ramming Plate - 500lb - 300gp

[noob]

erm.... will this do? built using the Arms and equimpment guid. you could sawap out the balista for a cannon for 1000gp but i desined it to use a self loading Arbalist for rapid charicter killing.

Warroir Armoured Car
Huge Vehicle
66,800gp Vehical cost
135,000gp Magic Cost

total 201,800gp market price.

Handel animal +6

Speed 70ft (clumsy)

Overall AC 3

Hull AC 3
Hull Hp 100 (hardness 5)
Armour Outer Hp 15 (hardness 10)
Armoured Frame Hp 10 (hardness 5)
Crew 1
Turret
AC 3
Turret Hp 50 (hardness 5)
Armour Outer Hp 15 (hardness 10)
Armoured Frame Hp 10 (hardness 5)
Crew 2-3

Attack

Arbalist
Solder +2 (-4 aim penalty)
dam 3d8+2 +ammo mod
1 full round actions to reload
60 rounds carried (no cargo)

or

Cannon
solder +0 (Dc 15 Int test or take further -2 per range inc)
Dam 10d6+2 +ammo mod
6 move actions to reload.
30 rounds carried (inc powder, no cargo)

Ram 9d6 (ram plate - Half damage in initiated rams)

Face 10ft by 10ft
Height 15ft

Crew 3 (1 dirver,2 Artilery)
Cargo 1000lb

Weight 6000 lb

Build if needed

Mobile Redoubt - 1500gp

Vehical Augmentations

Armour Plaiting - 3000lb - 3000gp
1" Darkwood Amour 10 hp, Hardness 5
1/2" Iron Plating 15 hp, Hardness 10

Artillery Mounting - 1500lb - 500gp
MW balista - 800gp
+1 Self loading 3000gp
or
Mw Breach loader cannon 1800gp (price shifted from D&D Past)
+1 Self loading 3000gp

Rotating Platform - 500lb - 500gp
Doubles crew requirments for Balista

Self Propelled - 132,000gp

Speedy Wheels - 20lb - 100gp

Extra Capacity - 1000lb - 500gp

Ramming Plate - 500lb - 300gp

Does not work without tons of sheanighans to raise damage to at least 400 per turn and to raise the actual hp to roughly 10^20 or make it immune to damage.

[Morty_Jhones]

yea you could start trying to make it immune to everything but then you could not afford to have 100 of these thing rolling everywhere shooting stuff up.


its already immune to infantry, an efective DR of 15 will stop all but titans hammering it.

it's crew have TOTAL concealment, so line of affect and target spells cant hit them, so no charms or gazes can hit them eather.

It dishes out 3d8+2 damage EVERY round so it will obliterate most combatents easly befor they can kill it.

It son't need a PC class to crew, so yo pesants get over hear and drive this thing.....

if it needs more kick then it can call one of its CANNON armed mates over to kick but

also since the Cannon only need MOVE actions to reload the crew can fire OTHER guns whill it reloads.
strap on a self loading Rifle or whateaver and let ripp whill you wait for the cannon to ar-arm.



yes you could add other affects, but trust me this made a VERY nasty boss encounter.

and I under cooked it using just its level 3 NPC crew. since as WBL it take only its 4 crew to be level 8 NPC's to afforde this as there enounter Gear. when you add in the other 7 pasingers that drops it to just level 3-4 EACH with planty of cash left over for small arms and personal gear.

[noob]

yea you could start trying to make it immune to everything but then you could not afford to have 100 of these thing rolling everywhere shooting stuff up.


its already immune to infantry, an efective DR of 15 will stop all but titans hammering it.

it's crew have TOTAL concealment, so line of affect and target spells cant hit them, so no charms or gazes can hit them eather.

It dishes out 3d8+2 damage EVERY round so it will obliterate most combatents easly befor they can kill it.

It son't need a PC class to crew, so yo pesants get over hear and drive this thing.....

if it needs more kick then it can call one of its CANNON armed mates over to kick but

also since the Cannon only need MOVE actions to reload the crew can fire OTHER guns whill it reloads.
strap on a self loading Rifle or whateaver and let ripp whill you wait for the cannon to ar-arm.



yes you could add other affects, but trust me this made a VERY nasty boss encounter.

and I under cooked it using just its level 3 NPC crew. since as WBL it take only its 4 crew to be level 8 NPC's to afforde this as there enounter Gear. when you add in the other 7 pasingers that drops it to just level 3-4 EACH with planty of cash left over for small arms and personal gear.

They wanted a counter to uberchargers and mailmen sorcerers.
In his campaign regular soldiers probably do not exist: you can kill so many when you use builds with that much optimisation that it is just suicide to be a normal soldier.
It does not makes a nasty boss encounter for characters above level 5 because by level 5 if you are doing an ubercharger you can already reach like hundreds of damage per charge and charge multiple times a turn so it is just playing the first turn that guarantees the victory except that it is not because of a need for coordination of the crew so it is even more in the favour of the ubercharger than just one initiative duel.
It also is nearly unable to harm an astral projected divine oracle with a starmantle cloak and the pride domain.(no nonmagical weapon works and magical ones have only one chance on 400 to actually deal damage if they did hit and even if it kills the astral projection because you got 400+ of those tanks equipped with magical weapons able to fire at the divine oracle for dozens of turns then you still only delayed temporarily the oracle)

[Empyreal Dragon]

Infantry of a sort exists, but planar empires of millions of people might field like 20,000 dudes total? And most "infantry" is fielded with teams of "specialists" who are high level adventurer types drafted from across the kingdom. It shapes warfare a lot.

[Vizzerdrix]

Infantry of a sort exists, but planar empires of millions of people might field like 20,000 dudes total? And most "infantry" is fielded with teams of "specialists" who are high level adventurer types drafted from across the kingdom. It shapes warfare a lot.

I could still see light anti-infantry tanks like the one above being used as support units for the heavier builds. If nothing else, then for baiting out the bigger threats.

[Thurbane]

Does anyone have any details of the mysterious Cube build? https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...409-Cube-build

It sounds like what OP may be looking for...

[ExLibrisMortis]

Does anyone have any details of the mysterious Cube build? https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...409-Cube-build

It sounds like what OP may be looking for...

As mentioned on that thread, no character sheet was ever given, but the basics are simple: a stronghold built with Landlord, and a spell clock set to produce some ridiculous number of dispelling screens every round. Dispelling screen prevents the effects of Mordenkainen's disjunction from penetrating the stronghold, but is sacrificed in the process, so you need to generate a lot of them.

[Empyreal Dragon]

Where would I find this breech loader cannon?

[Morty_Jhones]

They wanted a counter to uberchargers and mailmen sorcerers.
In his campaign regular soldiers probably do not exist: you can kill so many when you use builds with that much optimisation that it is just suicide to be a normal soldier.
It does not makes a nasty boss encounter for characters above level 5 because by level 5 if you are doing an ubercharger you can already reach like hundreds of damage per charge and charge multiple times a turn so it is just playing the first turn that guarantees the victory except that it is not because of a need for coordination of the crew so it is even more in the favour of the ubercharger than just one initiative duel.
It also is nearly unable to harm an astral projected divine oracle with a starmantle cloak and the pride domain.(no nonmagical weapon works and magical ones have only one chance on 400 to actually deal damage if they did hit and even if it kills the astral projection because you got 400+ of those tanks equipped with magical weapons able to fire at the divine oracle for dozens of turns then you still only delayed temporarily the oracle)

You do note the very important 'RAM' stat?

so you do realise that your Ouber-charger better have a stupidly high reflex save yes.....

cuss if he dosn;t and this thing is in motion ( ie moved the previuse turn ) then he would have to make a reflex save of 10+9d6 Vs half. or take the full damage each and evey time he charged?

also RAM is an impruved vershion of OVERRUN..... theres no attack roll and no attacks of opertunity

you have a cimple choise. take all 9D6 damage or jump out of the way. EVERY time you get infrunt of me.

Re: Magical tank
Where would I find this breech loader cannon?


the rules are in the D&D past book, converting wealth mod to Cash is there 2.


pick your poundage of cannon, needs 2 crew cuss of the Turret
Field Gun -
1lb 1d12 15ft 300lb
6lb 2d12 30ft 400lb
9lb 3d12 45ft 500lb
12lb 4d12 60ft 800lb

Breach loader
Requires move actions to reload, ammo costs double

Flintlock
No missfire chance.

or you can just scale the Musket in the renacance firarms section of the DMG (p145) from medum weapon (1d12) to large (2d10) or huge (4d8)

[noob]

You do note the very important 'RAM' stat?

so you do realise that your Ouber-charger better have a stupidly high reflex save yes.....

cuss if he dosn;t and this thing is in motion ( ie moved the previuse turn ) then he would have to make a reflex save of 10+9d6 Vs half. or take the full damage each and evey time he charged?

also RAM is an impruved vershion of OVERRUN..... theres no attack roll and no attacks of opertunity

you have a cimple choise. take all 9D6 damage or jump out of the way. EVERY time you get infrunt of me.

Re: Magical tank
Where would I find this breech loader cannon?


the rules are in the D&D past book, converting wealth mod to Cash is there 2.


pick your poundage of cannon, needs 2 crew cuss of the Turret
Field Gun -
1lb 1d12 15ft 300lb
6lb 2d12 30ft 400lb
9lb 3d12 45ft 500lb
12lb 4d12 60ft 800lb

Breach loader
Requires move actions to reload, ammo costs double

Flintlock
No missfire chance.

or you can just scale the Musket in the renacance firarms section of the DMG (p145) from medum weapon (1d12) to large (2d10) or huge (4d8)

Except you are entirely wrong due to the turn per turn nature of the game the following thing happens against a level 5 ubercharger:

Turn 1: both rolls initiative
whoever wins gets a chance to attack.
if it is the ubercharger then the tank is not yet "moving" due to the turn per turn nature of the game.
the ubercharger charges toward the tank and the tank is turned into dust by something like 400 damage and if it survives then the ubercharger can charge a second time this turn(because all the jumps are charges thanks to battlejump so you can just charge over and over) it happens until the tank is dead or the ubercharger is out of movement(at which point the ubercharger did probably around a few thousand points of damage).

If the tank wins the initiative then the tank gets to attack and move then if it did not successfully kill the ubercharger it dies from a charge since it is not moving when outside of its turn.

It ends up always at turn 1 (unless one of the participants is immune to damage or both are immune to damage) except that the ubercharger will have better initiative rolls due to having some more equipment due to having spent 0 of its wbl on a tank.

So what you should seek is to improve the initiative of the tanks efficiently.(and not something that must be applied to each member of the crew)

[Empyreal Dragon]

I wonder if reactive armor would be worthwhile. Hardfire is in dragon 347, does 1d6 fire damage per ounce reflex 14 for half, so maybe if you add that you can prevent the ubercharger from hitting you again? He hits a layer of solid hardfire and dies in. A fiery explosion. At which point the crew uses make whole on the section he died on, and keeps rolling.

[Morty_Jhones]

thing is peps keep forgeting somthing.....


1. Combat range....

What distance is this thing going to start the combat at?
Just
with its balista it can reach out and touch somone at 1500ft without mod's or feats...

Using it's cannon that jumps up to 5,000ft (since cannons aim at lines affect NOT persons)

2. this tanks has more than one weapon...
yes is has it's main gun,,,,

but its based on the redout class vehical...

it has 8 FIRING POINTS, each witha 180 firing angle

1 Balista or Cannon (turret, 360)
2 Forwad Firing point
3 Top Firing point (360 Fire point)
4 Left side fire point
5 Left side fire point
6 Right side fire point
7 Right side Fire point
8 Rear Fire point

ok so the dude iin the back shouldent do much, but its pasingers can all take part in the defence of the vehical, a few pig sticker in there ready to recive charges with the interupt feat's and your charger ant gona make it....

3. THE Main gun

Note the weapons all have self loading, the only reasion they need a crew at all is to chose ammo type and aim.
They are move action to operate

start throwing some special ammo in there and you can realy tailor the dammage to what you need.

with the cannon option you have loads of special ammo available. Canister, Alcamists fire, Chain shot, Grap shot.... Etc.

4 RAM....

Ram rules override turn sequence.
they apply ASLONG AS THE VEHICAL IS IN MOTION, so do not magicaly turn off becuss of combat.

so narative entrance of vehical counts as moving, even before round 1. so ram rules apply.

by your logic...
Horseman sees foe and starts to galop over...

Roll I..
Horse magicaly grinds to a halt. while uneverse works out what happens.

FIGHT.....

yea right............ get a grip.


Yes its not indestructable, but TBH Nothing is.. you just do your best to make somthing Resionable and them make as many as you can.

I can see somthing like this being very pouler with the smaller races espeshaly gnomes and goblins as it gets around one of there main drawbacks simple being outmassed by the foe..

I would exspect a tech mecha city such as Lantern would have a couple of smaller vershions as these prowling around the city.