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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Raven777 View Post
    Just mentioning that a one off campaign setting based on this premise, and several isolated city-states implementing the various different proposed solutions, would be hella cool.

    Silent Lornia, its temples filled with the mute vigil of petrified citizens under the timeless stewardship of the risen dead.

    Resolute Karst, parlaying its newborns against supplies with slavers from the dark under.

    Militant Ulver, forcing rings that enforce both sustenance and obedience upon every citizen's finger.

    Fallen Qinas, it's mountain cave sanctuaries overtaken by magical crops under the violet glow of artificial suns.

    Devout Osria, blessed by the jealous gods of winter to endure the elements while all other faiths are brought low.
    Yeah, I'm… actually inspired to take this idea, and make it into… a "Rogue Trader" style "new crystal sphere to explore" for a Dungeons the Dragoning game I'm planning.

    I'll name the planet "Hoth"

  2. - Top - End - #32
    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Maat Mons View Post
    Sadly, it isn't difficult to ensure survival. Sadly for us, and having an interesting discussion, I mean. It's not sad for the people who get to not die.

    Stronghold Builder's Guide has a magic item called Everfull Larder. It conjures enough food for 5 people each time it's opened. And it can be opened an unlimited number of times per day.

    The only upper limit on on how many people you can feed out of one of those is how fast you can open the door, get in, grab food, get out again, close the door, and repeat. Unless it's one of those larders that's a cabinet rather than a room. Then skip the part about getting in and out.

    I'm not sure exactly how many of those it will take to feed 20,000 people. But it's not going to be very many. So whatever the necessary materials are for building and magic-ifying one, you can probably get together enough to craft as many as you need without too much fuss.
    I'm going to do a bit of quantification here to make a point about how setting-smashing this particular item actually is. Assume a dedicated team of six: one opens and closes the door, one runs in and grabs the food, one helps pull the grabber out, three carry the piles of food out for distribution. This team works one hour on, one hour off, for an eight hour shift, with six teams or 36 total handlers per larder. Allowing for some inefficacies with change-overs, the occasional slip and fall, and so on, we'll assume they only manage 500 pulls per hour instead of the theoretical 600 you'd get at 1 per round. That means each hour you acquire 2500 meals. The operation runs 24 hours a day, which means you get 60,000 meals out of one larder - enough to feed 20,000 people. Each day, every day, forever. That's a high end assessment, but even if you can only open the larder once per minute, you still pull out 7200 meals a day and feed 2,400 people, so ten larders comfortably feed a city of 20,000 even at this much lower rate.

    Now, here's the setting-breaking part. An Everfull Larder costs 15,000 gp. A common meal costs 0.3 gp. At the 60,000 meals rate a single Everfull Larder outputs 18,000 gp worth of meals per day. It literally pays for itself, plus interest, inside one day. These things destroy the very idea of an agrarian economy utterly. There's really no reason, in a setting where they already exist, why any city would face any level of food scarcity under any circumstances.

    This is sort of a general problem with D&D hypotheticals. In order to impose any sort of environmental catastrophe on such a society, you have to scale back magic massively.
    Now publishing a webnovel travelogue.

    Resvier: a P6 homebrew setting

  3. - Top - End - #33
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    I wrote a food and travel guide. Food-producing planar bound minions seem very handy to have!

    Remember, shape the terrain to your liking and start farming it. You have plant growth. You can seemingly train some non-casters to be casters. You're an overlord. You have resources!
    Last edited by Endarire; 2021-02-09 at 11:08 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by GPuzzle View Post
    And I do agree that the right answer to the magic/mundane problem is to make everyone badass.
    Quote Originally Posted by Flickerdart View Post
    If you're of a philosophical bent, the powergamer is a great example of Heidegger's modern technological man, who treats a game's mechanics as a standing reserve of undifferentiated resources that are to be used for his goals.
    My Complete Tome of Battle Maneuver/Stance/Class Overhaul

    Arseplomancy = Fanatic Tarrasque!

  4. - Top - End - #34
    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    The halaster`s fetch line of spells, polymorphing useless people into egg laying hens, and hydra farming will provide more than enough food. Minor servator cast on shovels will keep the cave entrance clear for fresh air to get in, and eventually clear paths out (why spend a thousand years in a cave when you can rebuild under the deep snow). Water isn't a problem with snow all around so long as you have heat, and any number of flame weapons are basic enough that they should already be available (everyone is a mark for a flaming sword).
    ,,,,^..^,,,,


    Quote Originally Posted by Haldir View Post
    Edit- I understand it now, Fighters are like a status symbol. If you're well off enough to own a living Fighter, you must be pretty well off!

  5. - Top - End - #35
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    MonkGuy

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
    All of the more exotic escape options are right out—no wishes or miracles, no plane shifting or demiplane hideaways. Somehow you have to survive right there in your own secluded valley. You have only weeks to prepare before the catastrophe strikes and the snowdrifts are two hundred feet high. What’s your plan to survive?
    May not been your intention but you left Planar Bubble out.


    As such, we can emulate cryostasis with the following ingredients:
    1: a Planar Shepherd for Planar Bubble all day long with plane where time flow is slowed to "1 day on material plane = 1 round on the time plane". This is a 14,400:1 factor. (1round x 10 x 60 x 24 = 14,400 rounds for a day)
    2: A wizard/sorcerer to cast Endless Slumber

    1 day on the time plane equals 14,400 days on the material plane. Roughly ~40 years (14,400 / 365 = 39,45..).

    10,000 / 40 = 250 days

    The Planar Shepherd will watch over everybody for these 250 days and is the sole person who needs food & water. The rest will be put into "Endless Slumber" and will be willingly fail their saves rolls until they are forced (with some damage: e.g. a slap from a non-lethal unarmed strike).

    ________________

    Without Planar Bubble:

    Well, no one of the people who live "now" will see the "good days to come" after the 10,000year period anyway. So it is a question of how to make the live for the generations in the meanwhile as comfortable as possible and least stressful as possible. Further, we need enough diversity in genetic DNA pool to survive the long time span.

    1. Everybody should get a basic cleric education to increase the numbers of 5th lvl clerics that can create water and food.

    2. Everybody who is free willing can get an "Endless Slumber" to sleep most of the harsh time of his live if he really wishes.


    Edit: corrected spell name..^^

  6. - Top - End - #36
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    Jack_Simth's Avatar

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Oh, yes, there's another way!

    Stat drain some trolls (or other creatures with regeneration) down to 0 in a mental ability score. Put rings of Sustenance on them.

    Carve 'em up.
    Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

  7. - Top - End - #37
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    40,000 man/years of food. Only a thousand years to wait.
    Use goodberry, create food, and other such things to stretch your food ration during the early rush.

    Petrify almost everyone.
    Guardians eat the food supply until the snow melts.

  8. - Top - End - #38
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    I like the idea of giving everyone lycanthropy, but I'd make sure to stick to arctic animals like polar bears and arctic foxes.

    My idea would be less invasive. First, I'd order the magic users to train as many people as possible, so that they can either cast the first level 'endure elements' spell, or second level spells like 'tree shape' for sentinels, and if they're really lucky, druids might eventually be able to wild shape into something able to keep itself warm.

    For all the other non-magically inclined people, expected to be the majority, I'd prepare for the present by first making sure everyone has warm clothes, which should be pretty easy if we're in the normally expected temperate setting where winters are already an annual event. I'd identify all commoners with the chicken infested flaw, and have them mass produce poultry. Larger beasts suitable for feasts to keep the populace happy will be obtained by attracting monsters via dangling commoners with the delicious flaw outside city walls, then riddling them with arrow swarms.

    I'd prepare for the future by:

    1: Mandating that everyone unable to use magic take at least their first level in commoner, so that more chicken infested and delicious people could be created.

    2: Sponsoring a bard college, where performers could be trained even if they're not actually bards, in order to keep the populace entertained long term.

    3: Sourcing plant seeds suitable for cold weather environments, perhaps conjuring or creating them via magic, or trading for them via lesser planar binding creatures from a cold dominant plane.

    4: Shift everyone in the city to cold resistant versions of their races by cornering the market on wands of alter self (and having the spellcasters create more of them), then mandating their use at certain crucial moments of people's relationships such that future generations have straight up cold resistance.

    Backup plan would be to use the 'were polar bear' lycanthropy thing on everyone, then become a nomadic tribe.

    Second backup plan would be to train everyone up as best they can, then hitting the caves, swarming through them until someone finds their way to the underdark, then set up a self sufficient community there, eating underground fungus, herding rothes, and fending off drow.

    Third backup plan would be to pack everyone into the caves in waves, with each layer being petrified by summoned medusas, really just packing everyone in there, weakest in back. Find the elf mages, turn them into baelnorns, and have them wake everyone up when convenient, strongest (highest level) first so they can protect the rest.

    I'd leave the mass undead ideas to other cities.
    Last edited by Bronk; 2021-02-10 at 10:23 AM.

  9. - Top - End - #39
    Titan in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Originally Posted by Biggus
    *Flesh to Stone, Stone to Flesh*
    I like the petrification approach, but I do note that there’s a DC 15 Fort save required to survive Stone to Flesh.

    This may pose a problem for a fair number of the citizens. Since the goal here is to save as many people as possible, is there a way to increase their chances of making that Fort save?

    Originally Posted by Mechalich
    I'm going to do a bit of quantification here to make a point about how setting-smashing [the Everful Larder] actually is.
    True, as worded it’s not especially well-thought-out. Were there ever any errata or updates for 3.5? And does Pathfinder have anything similar?

    Originally Posted by Gruftzwerg
    May not been your intention but you left Planar Bubble out.
    I did overlook that, and while I probably would have included it in things that are right out, this is an intriguing approach.

    However, I’d say the odds of any given city having a Planar Shepherd druid are extremely low, and even lower for one that happens to specialize in time. But it’s certainly an interesting idea.

    Also, please note the scenario is for a thousand-year winter, rather than ten thousand years, so in your example the Shepherd would need to stand watch for only 25 days.


    Originally Posted by Bronk
    First, I'd order the magic users to train as many people as possible, so that they can either cast the first level 'endure elements' spell….
    Are there any specific rules about how long it takes to train someone in their first level of a spellcasting class?

  10. - Top - End - #40
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    I can't help but goggle at the number of people who look at a scenario involving massive population loss, where the gods will be weakened by the lack of followers, and respond with, "let's solve this by making more Clerics!"

    I expect most gods will die off during this fiasco.

    -----

    What is the size, temperament, hibernation habits, and alignment of a polar bear? An Arctic fox? I'm not sure if either will be conducive to my intended society (although, trapped in a cave, with nothing to do, surrounded by women who are all foxes doesn't exactly sound horrible )

  11. - Top - End - #41
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    DruidGuy

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    I can't help but goggle at the number of people who look at a scenario involving massive population loss, where the gods will be weakened by the lack of followers, and respond with, "let's solve this by making more Clerics!"

    I expect most gods will die off during this fiasco.:)
    Focus on gods with worshipers on more than one plane? Or godlike beings like Demon Lords or Archdevils or their good equivalents who can grant cleric spells but don’t rely on worshipers to live? Or anything worshipped by aquatic or subterranean races? Seems like you could predict the winners in the divine mass death.
    Last edited by Gnaeus; 2021-02-10 at 12:24 PM.

  12. - Top - End - #42
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    Maat Mons's Avatar

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Were there ever any official rules making gods dependent on followers? I thought gods dying without enough worship was just a common houserule.

    Anyway, even if a god is dead, you can still get spells as a cleric of him/her. That's what the feat Servant of the Fallen is for. And in most campaign settings, you can be a Cleric with no patron deity. There's also the Mystic class, which is a kind of spontaneous Cleric that is explicitly forbidden from having a patron. Mystic was, lore-wise, a class that originated when all godly power was shut off from the mortal realm. So they don't give a crap if gods die.



    Cold resistance isn't actually too hard to get.

    Shape Soulmeld (Planar Chasuble) gets you Cold resistance 10 if you're Good-aligned. Shape Soulmeld (Necrocarnum Vestments) gets you Cold resistance 5, but it's Evil. If you have a point of essentia, which can be acquired via a feat, Shape Soulmeld (Frost Helm) or Shape Soulmeld (Urskan Greaves) would work too.

    Frostblood orcs and frostblood half-orcs also get Cold resistance 10. According to the text, frostblood orcs resulted from a bunch of orcs drinking white dragon blood. I think it said they killed the dragons to get the blood, but that's stupid. Dragons are powerful, you don't want to fight them.

    Instead, if you're an orc tribe, you should approach a white dragon about being it's loyal subjects in exchange for getting to use it's blood to make yourselves better suited to survive in this harsh new world, and consequently also become more useful minions to the dragon. And if you're a human civilization, find yourself an tribe of frostblood orcs and get to making some babies. That's the great thing about being a D&D human. You can crossbreed with anything. Just find whatever's doing well, mix your genes, and your offspring will do well. Like friggin' xenomorphs.

    Dungeon 109 has a feat called Flesh of the Icy Tomb that converts all Cold damage you receive into nonlethal damage. But you need Tomb-Tainted Soul and Endurance as prerequisites.

    Dragonscale Husk gives you resistance 5 to Acid, Cold, Electricity, and Fire damage at 5th level. It can be applied to a wide variety of classes. For example, Warrior, for the lowest barrier to entry. Or Cleric, for an actually useful class. You do need to have the Dragonblood subtype. But you can ensure that in future generations by crossbreeding with dragons! If you're human, I recommend silver dragons, to eventually wind up with a society of silverbrow humans. Or if you're impatient, turn everybody into dragonborn of Bahamut.

  13. - Top - End - #43
    Dwarf in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    It's worth mentioning here that Frostburn is your friend for this, as it lists temperature bands and ways to resist the cold.
    For instance, your polar bears still need an additional layer of protection in extreme or unearthly cold temperatures, but cold resistance 5 is almost enough to ignore unearthly cold, and cold resist 10 means you're completely protected.

  14. - Top - End - #44
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    DrowGuy

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    make sure you get a room on Snowpiercer? ......

  15. - Top - End - #45
    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
    True, as worded it’s not especially well-thought-out. Were there ever any errata or updates for 3.5? And does Pathfinder have anything similar?
    It's just one item. There are other ways to provide effectively limitless food on the cheap. Endairre's travel guide linked above mentions the Movanic Deva - a 6hd outsider that has Create Food and Water, as a 9th level caster, at will! A 10th level cleric can bind one for 10 days for a mere 3000gp (half price because creating food is a non-violent task, and you can even donate that money to an appropriate temple which will then spend it on other social services, so it counts double).

    Create Food and Water feeds 3 people/caster level for a day. Cast at 9th level it feeds 27. Cast every round it feeds 27*14400 = 388800 people.

    Ultimately this is a problem with how D&D is built. The system is designed so that modest investment can simply erase everyday problems for a dungeon crawling group (meaning the PCs, plus hirelings and pack animals, so a few dozen people equivalents) at a modest investment in order to simplify the accounting and make wilderness travel less complicated for groups uninterested in that sort of thing. Unfortunately, if you scale up basically any of these methods, you make it easy for a city to survive without any outside inputs at all. This really isn't surprising, a lot of D&D items allow you to create something from nothing, which makes them effectively perpetual motion machines, and a world in which perpetual motion machines work is a world with fundamentally different problems than our own.
    Now publishing a webnovel travelogue.

    Resvier: a P6 homebrew setting

  16. - Top - End - #46
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    Jack_Simth's Avatar

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    It's just one item. There are other ways to provide effectively limitless food on the cheap. Endairre's travel guide linked above mentions the Movanic Deva - a 6hd outsider that has Create Food and Water, as a 9th level caster, at will! A 10th level cleric can bind one for 10 days for a mere 3000gp (half price because creating food is a non-violent task, and you can even donate that money to an appropriate temple which will then spend it on other social services, so it counts double).

    Create Food and Water feeds 3 people/caster level for a day. Cast at 9th level it feeds 27. Cast every round it feeds 27*14400 = 388800 people.
    Note: That critter only works that well if you're going with standard action casting times for spell likes, rather than inheriting the casting times from the base spells. If you go with the casting time of the base spell.... Create Food and Water has a ten minute casting time: That 388,800 drops down by a factor of 100, to 3,888. That's not to say it's a serious problem with the plan: One Sorcerer-10 (because better Charisma checks, and can get away with doing it without any expensive material components) Lesser Planar Binding one such creature successfully every day works out to ten of those running for the duration, which means 38,880 folks fed by one person's efforts (which are snitched form the outer planes, but still....), which is nearly double the population listed in the exercise.
    Last edited by Jack_Simth; 2021-02-10 at 08:22 PM. Reason: Brevity, and noting that it still works anyway.
    Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

  17. - Top - End - #47
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    GreenSorcererElf

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    For shelter, we will use the caves. For meat, we use wall of stone and stone to flesh. For clothes we use... eh, who needs em. For vegetables it gets a little tricky. Planar binding a bunch of extraplanar plant creatures might be the way to go. Worst case, we alter everyone into meat eaters only and eat fleshwalls.

    In order to keep the region alive, we find some way of getting stasis placed on large amounts of land. If that is undoable, planar binding something that radiates sunlight to keep plants alive as well as crafting decznters of endless water.

  18. - Top - End - #48
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    Jack_Simth's Avatar

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
    I should’ve mentioned that Pathfinder rules are available, so Abstemiousness is a good catch.
    Oh. Then you want to craft a bunch of Darkskulls, tied to Daylight. You can use them to grow plants, complete with a day/night cycle (you move them around the caverns).

    And, of course, if Pathfinder rules are in play, you can craft useful outsiders, rather than binding them: Make several Trompe L'oeil's. A few Juvenile Brozne Dragons will do the job. Create Food and Water, CL 12, at-will. Even with the ten minute casting time, that's 5,184 people fed per dragon. You need four of them to keep everyone in food (but do build a few extras in case of disaster). They're quite durable, and they double as guards.
    Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

  19. - Top - End - #49
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Gnaeus View Post
    Focus on gods with worshipers on more than one plane? Or godlike beings like Demon Lords or Archdevils or their good equivalents who can grant cleric spells but don’t rely on worshipers to live? Or anything worshipped by aquatic or subterranean races? Seems like you could predict the winners in the divine mass death.
    Quote Originally Posted by Maat Mons View Post
    Were there ever any official rules making gods dependent on followers? I thought gods dying without enough worship was just a common houserule.

    Anyway, even if a god is dead, you can still get spells as a cleric of him/her. That's what the feat Servant of the Fallen is for. And in most campaign settings, you can be a Cleric with no patron deity. There's also the Mystic class, which is a kind of spontaneous Cleric that is explicitly forbidden from having a patron. Mystic was, lore-wise, a class that originated when all godly power was shut off from the mortal realm. So they don't give a crap if gods die.
    Touché.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thac0 Redeye View Post
    make sure you get a room on Snowpiercer? ......
    Lol. I think that the only world where that's likely an option, you'd probably prefer the warmth of the Fire rings around their sky ships.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jack_Simth View Post
    Note: That critter only works that well if you're going with standard action casting times for spell likes, rather than inheriting the casting times from the base spells. If you go with the casting time of the base spell.... Create Food and Water has a ten minute casting time: That 388,800 drops down by a factor of 100, to 3,888. That's not to say it's a serious problem with the plan: One Sorcerer-10 (because better Charisma checks, and can get away with doing it without any expensive material components) Lesser Planar Binding one such creature successfully every day works out to ten of those running for the duration, which means 38,880 folks fed by one person's efforts (which are snitched form the outer planes, but still....), which is nearly double the population listed in the exercise.
    A) is this a major point of contention?

    B) what's the cost on maintaining those?

    C) what's the expected financial output of 20k civilians?

  20. - Top - End - #50
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    For my purposes, it would be very helpful to have answers to these particular questions:

    1. Given the DC 15 Fort save necessary to survive Stone to Flesh, is there any way to increase the chance of making that save?

    2. For the Everful Larder, were there any errata and/or updates for 3.5? Does Pathfinder have a similar contraption?

    3. Are there any specific rules about how long it takes to train someone in their first level of a spellcasting class?

  21. - Top - End - #51
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
    For my purposes, it would be very helpful to have answers to these particular questions:

    1. Given the DC 15 Fort save necessary to survive Stone to Flesh, is there any way to increase the chance of making that save?

    2. For the Everful Larder, were there any errata and/or updates for 3.5? Does Pathfinder have a similar contraption?

    3. Are there any specific rules about how long it takes to train someone in their first level of a spellcasting class?
    1) lots of ways. Cloak of Resistance +5 (placed over the statue's shoulders shortly before "soft"), Fate of One, probably some alchemical mixture or another, Prayer, etc. I'm fairly confident that the Playground can get you from "Commoner with +0 Fort" to "99.75% survival rate". A given settlement will likely think of *some*, and this give a higher survival rate than "rest in snow", at least.

    2) "nope" was also given as an answer - do you have anyone on "ignore"? Also, the "1 second gathering time" seems a bit slow. However, it was also pointed out that the Pathfinder Trompe L'oeil of a creature with "Create Food and Water" SLA at will… will *also* solve this problem. So… yes, Pathfinder *does* have equivalent items, kinda.

    3) PCs, it's just "how long to get XP"… oh, *first* level? There's "starting age" charts. Compare them to Milo and his shenanigans, a little subtraction, and you'll have the answer of how many years it takes. Quite a few, depending on the class, I'm afraid.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2021-02-11 at 12:28 AM.

  22. - Top - End - #52
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    So a potentially awful idea (as in this will likely also result in the death of the settlement, just not via cold):

    Anhydruts (Sandstorm pg 191) get the epic spell Global Warming (Sandstorm pg 130) as a spell-like ability once per century. Global Warming (the spell) would forcibly and permanently set a 100 mile raidus area to be either Warm (which is a livable 60-90 degrees) or 1 temperature band higher (whichever is higher) but evaporates moisture to create desert-like conditions. Anhydruts specifically come to the Material Plane when some creatures commit transgressions against the deserts. They are also only 8 HD, which is within range of a Cleric with the Warforged Domain and an effective Cleric Level of 16 (which is reachable with a Talisman of Undead Mastery (MIC, 188) for 3K gold).

    Assuming one had a suitable Cleric with the Warforged Domain, the city could teleport their clerics to the Waste, offend the Anhydruts enough to force them to come out of Mechanus (exact method would depend on the DM), command them using the Warforged Domain, and then use their spell-like ability to effectively artificially maintain a livable (albeit uncomfortable) enviroment. It will also explicitly melt the snow which will create a flooding issue, but Wall of Stone could probably be utilized to create a dam system to help control where the flooding goes.

    More obscurely, to get a water supply for potential irrigation (beyond the melted snow you just created), a Wyrm Wizard could have selected the Shaman spell Create Spring (Oriental Adventures), which creates a more permanent source of water every 100 yards (depending on how fast Global Warming actually evaporates the water) at 6 gallons an hour. If you have access to Shamans, they'd notably always be able to prepare the spell provided they have a 2nd level spell slot.

    If self-resetting traps are allowed, but self-resetting traps of food-producing spells are not allowed: you can possibly produce natural sunlight to grow plants via self-resetting traps of Sunrise (gained via the Initiate of Lathander feat in Player's Guide to Faerun) which is explicitly equivalent to natural sunlight. Continual Flame could be used as a substitute, if self-resetting traps are not-kosher and desert plants that don't have high sunlight requirement can be found. Depending on what moisture you can retain, fungi don't require a lot of sunlight and could probably be grown within the cave structures.

    Downside? You've just enslaved a bunch of Inevitables to pull this off, and now you have to deal with the fact that they are probably going to send more after you. You also still have to find a more permanent solution to the eternal darkness issue (which significantly hampers agriculture).
    ARRRRGH, I'm a pirate, ninjas are no match for me, Yargh!
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  23. - Top - End - #53
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by smasher0404 View Post
    Downside? You've just enslaved a bunch of Inevitables to pull this off, and now you have to deal with the fact that they are probably going to send more after you. You also still have to find a more permanent solution to the eternal darkness issue (which significantly hampers agriculture).
    Your looking at that all wrong - a fresh brand is… I mean, inevitable coming after you is *great*!

    That's "steady supply of XP", "steady supply of metal" and "steady supply of minions for your Warforged-domain Clerics".

    That's wins all around, any way you slice it!

  24. - Top - End - #54
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    A) is this a major point of contention?
    It's debated enough in 3.5 that the answer is "ask your DM." Which in turn means that any reliance on the more favorable interpretation is problematic.

    But as noted: Hardly an issue when a Wizard or Sorcerer-10 can have ten of them constantly, and you only need to worry about 20,000 folks.
    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    B) what's the cost on maintaining those?
    "It depends".

    If you have to hire spellcasting services from your own casters? Quite a bit. If you only have to worry about material components, potentially free (Planar Binding line doesn't have expensive materials). Using Planar Ally for same, and just the material components, going by a "nonhazardous" days/level task for a 6 HD outsider? 3500 gp/casting (3,000 gp in gifts, 500 xp), or 350 gp/day/angel for a 10th level caster. 200 gp/day/angel, if feeding folks is considered sufficiently in line with their ethos to be halved again. We need six, so we need a sustained output of either 1,200 or 2,100 gp/day.

    And, of course, the Pathfinder base makes this easier, as there are no XP requirements in Pathfinder, just component requirements.
    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    C) what's the expected financial output of 20k civilians?
    Pretty high. With a pathfinder base, if we assume each civilian has an ability score of 10, and one rank in a class skill of either profession or craft (3.5's would be equivalent - four ranks in a class skill), that they take ten, and that you can get all the money because you're also taking care of all their needs via magic? 20,000 * (((10+4)/2)/7) = 20,000 gp/day. Even if only half of them are of working age, and you can only capture half of their output, you're still ahead by either 3,800 or 2,900 gp/day. And that's assuming none of them have Skill Focus, a suitable Masterwork Tool, and/or an ability modifier of +1 or better (most of them should have at least one of the above, really).
    Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Originally Posted by Maat Mons
    Were there ever any official rules making gods dependent on followers? I thought gods dying without enough worship was just a common houserule.
    I’d be interested in this myself, since it would certainly have an impact on the setting if true. But I don’t recall any setting where the lack of worshipers explicitly ends a god.

    Lost Empires of Faerûn only alludes to this on p. 43:

    “…the death of a god takes a long time, and even a deity that has long since lost its mortal worshipers may persist as a universal principle or a symbol that still retains a tiny spark of divine power.”

    This could be taken either way, so if there’s other text that explicitly draws a connection between loss of worshipers and permanent demise of a deity, I’d be interested in seeing it.

    Originally Posted by Palanan
    2. For the Everful Larder, were there any errata and/or updates for 3.5?
    Originally Posted by Quertus
    …”nope" was also given as an answer….
    I haven’t seen an answer to this question.

    Originally Posted by Quertus
    Compare them to Milo and his shenanigans….
    Who’s Milo? No idea what you mean here.

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Jack_Simth View Post
    Pretty high. With a pathfinder base, if we assume each civilian has an ability score of 10, and one rank in a class skill of either profession or craft (3.5's would be equivalent - four ranks in a class skill), that they take ten, and that you can get all the money because you're also taking care of all their needs via magic? 20,000 * (((10+4)/2)/7) = 20,000 gp/day. Even if only half of them are of working age, and you can only capture half of their output, you're still ahead by either 3,800 or 2,900 gp/day. And that's assuming none of them have Skill Focus, a suitable Masterwork Tool, and/or an ability modifier of +1 or better (most of them should have at least one of the above, really).
    Okay but civilians don't generate currency out of thin air, and even if you're nationalising everyone's income to pay for expensive material components with which to cast spells, the components aren't being generated out of thin air either (or transmuted from the currency), and unless the components are plants or some other potentially renewable resource it doesn't matter how much money you have if your city physically runs out of and cannot acquire more material components
    Last edited by Whyareall; 2021-02-11 at 09:46 AM.
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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Whyareall View Post
    Okay but civilians don't generate currency out of thin air, and even if you're nationalising everyone's income to pay for expensive material components with which to cast spells, the components aren't being generated out of thin air either (or transmuted from the currency), and unless the components are plants or some other potentially renewable resource it doesn't matter how much money you have if your city physically runs out of and cannot acquire more material components
    True. But once you get rid of the short term time constraints, you could ultimately make a trade route with somewhere in the underdark or deep ocean and produce trade goods that the underdark race wants. This where that DMG section AvatarVecna quoted comes in. Eventually, trade will normalize and all listed goods will again be available as per the DMG. I don’t think that’s going to happen in time to stop mass starvation upon disaster. But I do think you could include trade in a long term survival strategy.
    Last edited by Gnaeus; 2021-02-11 at 10:41 AM.

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Quote Originally Posted by Whyareall View Post
    Okay but civilians don't generate currency out of thin air, and even if you're nationalising everyone's income to pay for expensive material components with which to cast spells, the components aren't being generated out of thin air either (or transmuted from the currency), and unless the components are plants or some other potentially renewable resource it doesn't matter how much money you have if your city physically runs out of and cannot acquire more material components
    No, they don't come from nowhere. So? Most material components- PF especially- are gemstones, which can be found underground. You're going to need to do a lot of digging anyway. Find the raw gems and ore with profession(miner) or whatever, process to coins or cut gems or art objects or whatever with Craft. The raw productivity of 20,000 folks at a +4 skill check is quite high, and the Pathfinder Planar Ally route needs about 10-15% of the output. You've got enough leeway that it's OK if not everyone has an immediately applicable skill. Retrain as needed.
    Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    To be honest, I would think prematurely ending the winter would be the main focus. Surviving would be possible. But thriving would be difficult.
    Plus, spell research would begin somewhere on "end global winter" spell.

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    Default Re: Surviving A Thousand-Year Winter

    Originally Posted by Gnaeus
    But once you get rid of the short term time constraints, you could ultimately make a trade route with somewhere in the underdark or deep ocean and produce trade goods that the underdark race wants.
    In the scenario as I’ve conceived it, the nearby cave system will be extensive laterally, but not vertically, and no feasible connection with any under-realms far below.

    Originally Posted by Gnaeus
    I don’t think that’s going to happen in time to stop mass starvation upon disaster. But I do think you could include trade in a long term survival strategy.
    There certainly won’t be any way for trade to help with the immediate crisis—as noted previously, in this scenario the town is secluded and essentially cut off from other communities. And since the crisis is equal or worse everywhere else, there’s effectively no trade to speak of, with hoarding and panic pricing making non-local items effectively unavailable.

    For some spell components and other rare essentials, it’s possible that there could be attempts by a few mid-level wizards to teleport out and try to find them elsewhere…but all the other mid-level wizards in the world will have that same idea, so it may be a bit of a feeding frenzy beyond the borders of the valley.

    In fact, it may be an essential aspect of preparation to organize some of the wizards to prevent exactly that sort of resource depletion from their own community. Rather than going out and taking from elsewhere, they may be needed just to protect whatever the town has on hand.

    Originally Posted by Jack_Simth
    The raw productivity of 20,000 folks at a +4 skill check is quite high….
    Not quite sure what you mean here. Hardly anyone in the town will have a background in mining, and if they’re petrified or otherwise unavailable, there won’t be a workforce per se. But I may not be grokking your broader point.

    Originally Posted by Calthropstu
    In order to keep the region alive, we find some way of getting stasis placed on large amounts of land.
    Can you elaborate on this? Do you mean Temporal Stasis, or something else?

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