scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2a2vrk.md

[Q] If you were Jake in The Two Year Emperor, what would you do?

Post:

Disclaimer: The Two Year Emperor is mine. If you haven't read it, pardon the waste of electrons.

I have plenty of ideas for where the story is going, but reviewers have suggested some really interesting ideas that ended up making their way into the story, and I thought I would ask for more of that. For example, in the other 2YE thread, drageuth2 suggested causing gold to change weight (from the usual 'massless coinage' houserule or, by RAW, '50gp = 1lb' to 'heavy gold nugget') by melting it from coins into raw gold, which I thought was really shiny.

The rules of the world are in Chapter 10.

Comments:

• u/Escapement:

  I read the first ~30 chapters some time back. I haven't looked at the entire thing recently, so apologies if this duplicates stuff that's already happened.
  
  I would personally go for an Ice Assassin Army.
  
  [Ice Assassin](https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20030124a) (also in Frostburn) or Simulacrum Clone Armies. Anyone who can cast Ice Assassin (Wiz 9 spell) can make an evil clone of a target *under their complete control*. If the evil clone happens to be a clone of themselves, the high level caster who just cast ice assassin, well, the clone can cast the spells you can... including, say, *Ice Assassin*. Your army of one can expand indefinitely more-or-less. Simulacrum is similar but requires a higher level target because of the percentage stuff. For fueling the caster cost requirements, consider planeshift or balor mining.
  
  Combat tactics: use mooks/summons carrying Dust of Sneezing and Choking (stuns for 5d4 rounds in an area, *no save*) backed up by infinite wizard armies. Start your attack by having some fraction of your wizard armies on another plane cast the spell *gate* to summon in all of the leadership and high-level characters of the opposing army that you know of and force them to hand-roll tacquitos while you kill them, before your assault begins.
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    ...ok, all of that is just *wrong*. Thank you. I will definitely think on how to use that. 
    
    And wow, DoSaC is totally broken.
    

• u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer:

  Leave.
  
  I would leave.
  
  Get everyone out and go somewhere else. This world is fucked and [bad things are happening.](#s " the gods are apparently resetting it. No proof people weren't allowed to run before, and basically gods would be the only ones able to stop that sort of flight.") Go to another place, another world. Another plane, if you have to.
  
  Did I miss a reason this isn't possible?
  
  Look, I know the Planar Handbook wasn't in the resources list, but other planes clearly exist. They're in the Prime Material now. And it is apparently ruled by idiot gods with some serious issues.
  
  So, leave. Jake's kidnappers wouldn't be happy unless they took everyone from their kingdom, but we've seen that *logistically* it is possible to do. They could likely be talked into saving the people and not the literal land in this instance, especially after seeing the results of [other advanced people.](#s " a mindbogglingly more advanced, post-scarcity magical kingdom's feeble attempts to fight back.") Or figure out how to bottle entire cities, if that helps.
  
  Point is, despite all their *wonderful* speed-chess plans to fight back, there is still no known way to defend any country anymore. Easy attacks abound, ones their foes are clearly able to enact right now. There is also proof many, many others have failed in the same situation before. [Even worse stuff.](#s " The gods themselves appear to be in favor of their country's destruction as part of an apocalypse that's going to be wrapping up soon.")
  
  So leave, and find a better place to live, with [nicer stuff.](#s " hopefully better gods.") Even if there isn't time to make such travel work, someone had to have done some world or plane hopping before. Find their stuff, unearth it, and play Stargate SG:1 until you find a gate that goes somewhere nice. Or at least [redacted.](#s " somewhere where the god of death hasn't apparently already won an overwhelming victory. If you need to make sure you aren't followed, grab several ways to possible new worlds and take a side-trip through the positive energy plane first. That'll shake off any undead armies following you.") You don't even need your Omaga plan follow up. And we all knew what that was the moment he thought it up.
  
  I would be in favor of this plan both as the person of Jake and as a member of a D&D adventuring party stuck in this situation.
  
  **Woah!** Wait, stop the presses. I just read in another response that there are Planer Ring Gates. So...other methods have to exist. This is sounding better and better.
  
  ---
  
  Either that, or run a quick ascension gambit so you can actually stand a chance of fighting back.
  
  No, not on yourself -- you likely don't have the soul that would become godly in the first place. No, bootstrap *your executive assistant*. You know, someone with a good mind who's humble, moral, and actually seems to like you and wants to help. Forget  [current plans.] (#s " reviving old gods.")
  
  If reality hands you lemons, make a goddess of lemonade.
  
  Just do it fast enough. We know [they] (#s " gods") can't react faster than Jake can do stupid things, and at least then you'll have a new goddess to support you.
  
  ---
  
  **tl;dr get the hell out of Dodge, or get into the god business as an early investor; or both.**
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    "You don't even need your Omaga plan follow up. And we all knew what that was the moment he thought it up."
    
    You, sir, are smarter than the average bear. I've already had several people ask what that plan was. 
    
    I really like the idea of ascending Suze, I just don't know how you would do it. Pun-Pun takes too long -- the gods would see as soon as you started the loop and show up to smack you.  Conceivably the Omnifiscer, but I think that trick is bogus and I wouldn't allow it.  Any thoughts?
    

    • u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer:

      Maybe I just read too much doomsday sci-fi. Didn't think Jake assumed planer travel was possible at the time, though. The idea I initially had was a suicide switch, some sort of “fuck the world” option. Means seemed obvious when I read that part, which to me is just good storytelling.
      
      ---
      
      *edit some numbers wrong, doesn't matter had dragon
      
      As for becoming a god, how that happens always depends on the story. I'm just going to go ahead and post the ideas I've got so far, as this is taking forever to work out in detail. This is really long.
      
      There are some basics. You've gotta become at least a quasi-god or hero deity -- Divine Rank: zero. This is what people like Hercules, Perseus, or Theseus have. They are just *better* than normal people and have some sort of divine nature, like a godly parent -- though that isn't listed as a requirement. The closest to a firm listed descriptor is that they *usually* have at least one higher than mortal stat. Someone acquiring this basic divine nature is the only rules path I know of that doesn't involve direct and high-level godly intervention. And that seems...unlikely at this point. Wishing someone into hero deity status should be a last option, as that seems equally unsafe.
      
      From reading the “rules”, such as they are, being *like* a god in some way appears to be one firm part of being considered one. My take is, if you have stats that are literally godly, and you also do godly things, it should just slot into place if there is room “up above”, so to speak. That which is like a very minor goddess and does a very minor goddess' work, *is* a very minor goddess, in other words. Worst case, you end up with a hero or champion who has literally inhuman stats.
      
      Well, worse-worst case is, existing gods erase you from existence. But that shouldn't stop you at this point. There are already hints that ascension is very possible and the gods watch out for common world-breaking exploits to it, but this path isn't exactly cheating. Wishes might still help, though I wouldn't go there unless you're very, *very* sure there are no better options.
      
      ---
      
      There are two ways to go that I see. Max her level and look for divine boosters, or think outside the box.
      
      First option, get Suze a class level, then powerlevel her. She has high INT (perfect memory?), so a wizard --and we can powerlevel those easy now. Done.
      
      Finding something to light that spark of the divine is hard, but seems possible. Depends on DM approval, though there are several spots where the plot might imply ways to do this. Might be one of Secret's terrible secrets, even.
      
      ---
      
      Or you decide to jump out of the box and start swinging around wildly. Then it is time to explore something that's been kind of thin on the ground: dragons. We've got a creepy mathful topographical dungeon now, but still no dragons. We need some, so might as well make our own.
      
      Now, dragons have interesting stats. Physical are absurd, but this isn't a problem that can be solved by crushing with large size combat rules. No, I'm interested in their high mental stats, higher than any normal human. One might even say, on the way to godly.
      
      Problem is, you don't get mental stats of something you ploy'd into. But if Suze can really become a dragon, even just a *little*, then she's got some chances to bootstrap into godhood. The best shot seems to be just to get her to be a *hatchling* dragon, somehow, then artificially age her a **lot**. Dragons gain stats with age, not with class levels, and that includes much, much better mental scores. I'm not sure a poly'd dragon would count, but maybe it would in a strict reading of the rules (or lack of them). Otherwise, you could do something like wish to take the form of a hatchling dragon with your original mind in it's body, running and expanding along with it's brain. Or find or make magic item to do one of those strategies. It shouldn't be impossible to do.
      
      It is important to mention again that the point of the aging is to use the dragon's natural mental progression to improve your own stats. For that to happen, you need to be a dragon to the extent that you improve like they do. That also means you need a way to age a dragon that makes it actually mature. By strict rules, this isn't training or “growing up” somehow. You hit the age, the dragon gets the stats. We'll take advantage of that.
      
      ---
      
      I see two options for aging. If you can get a room with compressed time magic on it, maybe using some custom plane antics, and have dragon-Suze spend 1,200 years of relative time in it, great. Make sure she brings a book to read. If not, I think it is time to talk something like [Greater Curse](http://dndtools.eu/spells/complete-divine--56/bestow-curse-greater--729/).
      
      This specific spell allows for custom curses that are no more powerful than those given as examples. Any sane DM wouldn't allow negative spells to have strictly positive effects. So clearly, it would be possible here, as we're only using the rules as written. Personally, I'd figure out a way to bake it into a magic item that ages people who activate it. Here's how I'd justify that working to my DM:
      
      One of the set effects for Greater Curse is “one ability score is reduced to 1.” Permanently.
      
      Now, “venerable” age gives a character ~~-3 (point reduction, not penalty) to the three physical stats and +1 to the three mental ones. That's a total of -6 points of stat changes. The curse effect is therefore twice as bad as the sum effect being applied to a single standard adventure's average stat (13).~~ *edit wrong in a couple of ways, whatever. It is actually even more years with this methodology and the right numbers. Adulthood to venerable is 55 human years, so I'd round conservatively, and thematically, and say an equal Greater Curse effect is making a total of 100 years of human aging happen per cast to the target of the spell.
      
      To get Suze to 1,200 years old (greater wyrm) would require only 12 casts. Very doable for an item, still doable otherwise. Do note that it is touch only, and would still have to be available in someone's spell collection. Seems like something *someone* should know, even if your infodump didn't contain it.
      
      But on the *other* hand, if you can get some kind of Chamber of Maximum Learning going, all the better. Age her to 1,200 or so as quickly as possible in a compressed time field while she studies. I do not have rules for this, but it should be possible. No rules in core D&D for going mad from lonesomeness or isolation, so that isn't a worry. But really, give the woman some books. Lots of books. 
      
      Suze needs her own infodump, if at all possible. This would be a good time for that. Focus on stuffing that genius brain with secret knowledge from the looted temple, any spells and engineering secrets your new “friends” might have squirreled away, everything and anything. She'll have plenty of time to sort through it.
      
      Then find even more magical ways to get more knowledge into her. Try jamming mass-scryed knowledge in there too; total information awareness seems godly. Get all possible divination and knowledge magic running full-time, pour it into her brain. Maybe instead of a revived goddess of Secrets, you can get a dragon goddess of Knowledge out of it. That hits the right checkboxes on the “rule of cool” list.
      
      ---
      
      Through whatever methods, assume by this time that you've got something like Suze the “all naturally grown” gold great wyrm, with at least 30s for mental stats (more, if you let her advance from her human stats).
      
      Now kill her.
      
      Okay, maybe that was a little overly dramatic. You'd need to bring her back, obviously. I haven't worked out the best way to do this, but you need to get dragon-brained Suze into a real human body again. And I think a trip through the afterlife with increased intelligence on death might help thematically firm that up, so loss of natural intelligence doesn't occur.
      
      Remember, the point is that having a dragon with dragon stats isn't special. Having a human with the same mental age-growth curve of a max age dragon is very, very special. One might even say, quasi-godly. The end goal is a 30s mental stats Suze as a human again, all ready to do epic things in the world to to support their claim to divinity. Then you can start to power level her with class levels, if you haven't already.
      
      Getting “natural,” permanent ability scores that should normally be impossible for a mortal human (int, wis, and cha, in this case) is a good start, but you should also do a crazy hard task: like learning all the spells from two civilizations, diving into the secrets of a dead god, experimenting with how to make the best coffee in the multiverse (*It is by the coffee of Suze that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.*), something along those lines. If you set up a compressed time chamber, that'll push her in that direction already. If not, it might be time to get *really* creative.
      
      I know this all looks unlikely, but it is also thematically appropriate and could be done without drawing divine attention with any one act. Like wishing to be a dragon god. Well, maybe the time stuff, hard to call. We haven't heard of any dragon gods yet I think, so the position might be open, easing the way a bit.
      
      Hell, I'm half convinced just from writing this that she's a moderately old gold dragon in disguise *right now*. Wouldn't *that* be convenient for this plan.
      
      ---
      
      Even if my ideas have huge, commonly dismissed holes in them, hopefully it'll help get the juices flowing. Looking forward to more chapters. Keep up the good writing.
      
      **tl;dr dress for the god you want to be -- so become an ancient dragon, then turn back into a human and complete some heroic actions; time chambers to train under 10000x Earth's time are a good idea; Suze is totally a dragon already, isn't she?**
      

      • u/eaglejarl:

        Book of Vile Darkness has some additional options for Greater Bestow Curse, one of which is "advance the victim to the next age category", so it doesn't even have to be homebrewed.
        
        Thanks for the ideas; I'm glad I started this thread.
        

• u/drageuth2:

  hooray, I thought of something shiny <3  Thank you for that compliment.
  
  Here's something else I thought of:
  
  What are the conditions for de-sanctifying holy water?  Obviously if you drink holy water, you don't have holy pee.  But it can sit on the shelf indefinitely without losing its beatitude, right?  And presumably putting things like flavorings in it wouldn't have any effect (so long as the flavorings weren't cursed or antithetic to the deity blessing the water, I guess.)
  
  If you evaporate holy water, does it lose its beatitude?  Steam is still the _exact same water,_ just moved around.  It's not turned into something else like when you drink the water.  Hell, if the water is blessed by a deity with a fire/heat affinity, it should probably rightly make the water _stronger._
  
  Boiling holy water sounds like a helluva anti-undead weapon to me; it'd fill the air with holy steam and take out any of the fliers.  Or you could pressurize holy steam and fill up a portable hole with it; slap it onto a board or something and you have a 1-shot steam cannon that should blast away most undead.
  
  But that's all tactical thinking.  Thinking more strategically...  How does that holy water maker that the Deorsi have work?  Does it bless whatever water it touches, or does it have some sort of HW/volume limit?
  
  If you dropped it in the ocean, could you theoretically bless the whole damn thing, if you left it in long enough?  If you lowered it on an anchor into a major tidal cycle, you could probably bless most of the water in the ocean.  Not only would it kill any undead walking along the ocean floor, but it'd also mean that all the rain in the world is now _holy rain._  Which would probably put a damper (heh) on the undead nations.
  
  ---
  
  Edit:  I~DE~AAA!
  
  The Deorsi portal things that link two places together can be turned on and off with a command word or something, right?
  
  Make yourself a classical infinite-fall tunnel with two of them, with a third (deactivated) portal-half between them.  You can then drop things into the tunnel (via brief activation of the Input/Output portal) and then just let the object fall forever, picking up velocity and damage.  You can then have an instant surprise orbital strike wherever you can get the I/O portal half.  Turn it on, thing goes flying straight to the ground, boom.  If you found a way to suck the air out of the falling tunnel, there'd be no terminal velocity and you could even accelerate things to _trans-relativistic_ speeds!  Relativistic Kill Vehicle Portal Strike.  
  
  Or you could sink one portal half to the bottom of the ocean.  Then whenever you activate the other half, you'd have a million-PSI water cannon that could pulverize steel.
  
  OOO!  Does the holy water chalice have to _touch_ water to bless it, or does it just have to be 'within the cup'?   Depending on how it works, you could make it a part of a portal chain to the ocean (very carefully sized and positioned portals to prevent damage to the artifact, of course.)  Then you'd have a _Holy Firehose of Utmost Annihilation._
  
  Further idea:  Can Deorsi spell engines be keyed to a summoning spell?  If you had a magic tunnel that spat out a monster on demand, you'd be able to make much more scalable training arenas than Jake's current design.
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    Hm.  AFAIK, Rules As Written (RAW) are silent on how you de-sanctify holy water, so it's up to DM (or, in this case, me) decision.  I have a question in over at the GitP forums to see if anyone knows of a RAW answer.
    
    I like the steam cannon idea.  I was trying to do something similar a while ago:  put so much water in a Portable Hole that it would fuse and turn into a 1-shot plasma cannon.  Sadly, you can't get it dense enough in a useful period of time without using demiplane tricks that I've already outlawed.
    
    The Deorsi chalice is a 'Sacred Vessel', from page 37 of the Book of Exalted Deeds.  The exact wording is: "Water placed within it becomes holy water" so, no, it doesn't have to touch the chalice.  Interesting point, and one that I will definitely try to (ab)use if I can think of a way.
    
    The water has to be *in* the chalice, not just touching water that is in the chalice, so blessing the whole ocean would require pushing every drop of water through something the size of a punch bowl.  Theoretically possible but not practical.  (Although I *really* like the idea of holy rain, and have actually been working on an idea that is somewhat similar.)
    
    The Deorsi portals are Ring Gates.  Sadly, they only have a 100 mile range, they don't have an offswitch, and they DO have a mass limit:  they can only pass 100 pounds of stuff per day.  This removes most of the abuses that you can do with them.  But!  There's a loophole:  if something doesn't go all the way through, it doesn't count towards the mass limit.  e.g., if you reach your arm through and then pull your arm back, it doesn't count against the mass limit.  So, here's what you do:  take an iron bar, put it partway through.  Move the rings until the ends of the bar touch.  Weld the ends together.  You now have a no-ended iron bar.  Drop it, and it will fall forever, generating effectively infinite kinetic energy (it's possible, although difficult, to remove  the air from around it).  The problem is that you can't move the darn thing once you start it (because if the bar touches the edges of the rings it will break them), and you can't get it out of the rings.  
    
    The interesting thing about that is that (per my ruling), the two rings are *mathematically the same point*.  So, if ring A is parallel to the ground and ring B is perpendicular to the ground...what happens to the bar?
    
    As an aside, there are 'Planar Ring Gates' too.  Same thing, except they are 10' wide, have a mass limit of 10,000 pounds / day, and only function when the two rings are on different planes.
    
    
    As regards damaging the Sacred Vessel, there is a 6th level arcane spell called Hardening.  It permanently increases the hardness of an object, and the effects stack.  You can make the Vessel as touch as you like.  (Which they've done; that's why it can manage having 10 Decanters of Endless Water pointed at it without breaking.)
    
    Spell engines with summoning:  yes, you can.  Interestingly, however, you get no experience for summoned creatures, because the ability to summon them is factored into the summoner's XP value.  (The way it's normally expressed is 'you don't get extra XP if the caster throws a Fireball at you, so why would you get extra XP if he throws a Summon Monster at you'.)  Personally, I think this rules is a complete crock, but it is the rules.
    
    There's an out though:  a monster created by Polymorph is *not* summoned.  So, set up a spell engine that polymorphs houseflies into, say, a wolf.  The trainees beat the crap out of the wolf and gain XP.
    

    • u/alexanderwales:

      > The exact wording is: "Water placed within it becomes holy water" so, no, it doesn't have to touch the chalice. Interesting point, and one that I will definitely try to (ab)use if I can think of a way.
      
      The solution is to turn the chalice into a [Klein bottle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle). You can move from the "inside" to the "outside" without crossing an edge, so it's inside *is* its outside. All you really need is a way to alter the chalice and that fiddly bit where you technically cross into the fourth dimension, but after that you're good to go! (I suppose technically it could be argued that a Klein bottle has no inside or outside at all, in which case the artifact would be kaput, but it really depends on how those words are interpreted.)
      

      • u/Kodix:

        If it worked, wouldn't that alter all the water in the world into holy water? 
        
        Including perhaps the water vapor in the air, that also happens to be inside undead?
        
        I guess that's one way for getting rid of a billion of them.
        

    • u/drageuth2:

      You might still be able to use the ring gates for an oceanic water cannon.  You can chain together gate pairs to get around range restrictions.  With careful enough positioning of tiny buried gates, I'm sure you could make a surprising amount of the entire world be within '100 miles' of everything else :P.  After that, you just need a Hardened gate cover with a quick-release valve or something.  Then you could instantly summon 100 pounds of (potentally holy, if the Sacred Vessel is involved) water through a tiny corridor once per day.  Not _as_ effective, but still pretty damn powerful, and you could equip squads with them over time.
      
      If you have an infinitely falling no-ended bar, could you teleport it out with [teleport object](http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Teleport_Object) or something?  That might be a way of getting it out of the rings without touching them, for use in orbital/relativistic strikes.
      
      That polymorph thing sounds brilliant.  That also makes me wonder something, though.  Divination rules are that you can only track people, not places or things, right?  
      
      What qualifies as 'people'?
      
      Like, if you used inteligence-damping equipment and spells on a person enough to drive them to 0 intelligence or below, would they start counting as an animal instead?  Would that make them invisible to scrying, and controllable by druids?  You could potentially put some sort of druidic post-hypnotic command or geas or something on them, for them to do a bunch of stuff and then shuck the anti-brain gear.  That way, you could move people about on the surface without risk of being spotted.
      
      Attacking the problem from the other direction, what if you make a sentient artifact?  Does _that_ count as a person?  Can you use it as a scry-spy?  You could make a grid of buried gold sentient rings over the area you want to watch.
      
      Also, I had a thought about the current brute-force anti-teleport locating weakness thing:  What if you move the town _deep enough underground_ that it doesn't effect the surface?
      

      • u/eaglejarl:

        Let's see...
        
        Water cannon: could work, but would a lot of fiddling. Probably not the most efficient tactic, although it makes a nice surprise. 
        
        Scrying: there is a Scry Location spell that will locate places instead of people. Unlike other Scrying, it will even reach other planes!
        
        Int 0 as animal: I would have to check, but I believe if any of your abilities to to 0 you are either incapacitated or dead. Regardless, I would still treat them as people, not animals. 
        
        Sentient artifacts:  that's...an interesting idea. I think I would rule that they are things, not people, but I would need to think on it. 
        
        The underground trick is brilliant.
        

        • u/aeschenkarnos:

          An animal typically has an Int of 1 or 2, and I concur that "animal" is a creature type constant not a function of its Int.
          

        • u/drageuth2:

          Hrm, if it effects your decision, then according to [the wiki](http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Intelligent_Items#Intelligent_Items), intelligent items should be treated as the sentient construct race.  So if constructs are vulnerable to scrying, one could argue that intelligent items are as well.  But ultimately yeah, that'd probably be DM's call.  And it's less useful of a tactic if you have Scry Location anyway.  Could be useful as a means of tracking a mind-blanked mark you tricked into picking up the ring, maybe?  Mind-blank says that scrying targeted at the blanked person fails, but says nothing about the sentient ring in their backpack (Air Bud rules lawyering FTW :P)
          
          I honestly thought that moving the town underground was what you were going for, what with showing us just how far _one_ mage could dig into a mountain, and then showing us you have tens of thousands of them.
          

    • u/ignirtoq:

      So I happen to be a mathematical physicist semi-specializing in GR.  I've never rigorously looked at a space with portals like this in it before (but after this discussion I probably will try), but my intuition suggests you're going to run into more problems than you realize.
      
      As far as you've described, the portal openings consist of a pair of (probably) ellipses with conjugate points on the part of the planes defined by the ellipses interior to the ellipses mathematically identified.  The problem with doing things that way is twofold.  First, these portals have no "backs," meaning if something going in the "front" of portal A comes out the "front" of portal B, then anything going in the "back" of portal A comes out the "back" of portal B.  Requiring portals be "anchored" on flat surfaces doesn't fully solve that problem due to the next problem.
      
      Since these are *mathematically* identified points, then anything physical can travel through the portals.  Including forces.  Including gravity.  As a toy example, consider two point masses with appreciable mass, each very near the portal surface compared to the size of the portal.  At that distance, the relative locations of the portals don't matter; they can be lightyears apart and the masses exert a pull on each other like they are right next to each other.
      
      Now rotate one of the portals around one of the point masses.  Wherever the portal opening faces, that is where the force of attraction is.
      
      What does this mean in the context of people using portals?  Say you have a portal in front of you (normal vector perpendicular to the ground's normal vector) with output above you facing down toward you (normal vector anti-parallel to ground's normal vector).  Looking through the portal you see the Earth "in front" of you, which means you feel its gravity in front of you, too, *in addition to the normal gravity below you*.  So the mere presence of portals near massive bodies changes the force of gravity **appreciable distances away from either of the portals**.  In theory, with the proper locations and orientations, you can severely screw with gravity across the entire planet with two portals on the same continent.
      
      To go with the RAW while keeping physics as realistic as possible, you either have to drop mathematical identification or GR.
      

      • u/Gurkenglas:

        Consider us being in the elemental plane of air, nothing but air around anywhere. Insert an infinite wall of soundproof material, dividing space into two. Punch a portal-sized hole in the wall. Place a strong loudspeaker a few kilometers from the portal, and yourself a kilometer from the portal on the other side. The sound that reaches you will be much weaker than if you were two kilometers away from the loudspeaker on its other side, and for the same reason gravitational pull towards a portal to a large mass will be as strong as usual from directly in front of the portal, and about quadratically with distance diminish as you back away from it.
        
        It would work much like a spaceship with air inside a space without having a hole punched into its wall.
        

      • u/aeschenkarnos:

        RAW seems to imply Aristotlean physics, not Newtonian, let alone Einsteinian. Gravity is locally generated and doesn't necessarily propagate.
        
        That said, there is considerable value in Doing Physics Experiments, in order to *work out* what actually happens in a RAW world. A lot of it will be DM's call, and the DM is *not necessarily* required to be consistent; it's already been established in-story that the DM's tolerance only goes so far, and the same may apply to physics.
        
        Remember that this is a creationist world with a fairly capricious Physics God.
        

        • u/eaglejarl:

          I have no explicit response to this, except that it made me smile. Thank you.
          

  • u/clawclawbite:

    I'm not familiar with weather control magic, but mixing in holy water to weather effects could do all kinds of things. At worst, wind blasting it, or feed it into a tornado, and use it as a delivery system.
    

• u/fortycakes:

  * You can use the Hourglass to make permanent *Symbol of Death* set to affect only undead creatures. (Attune them to Colborn so he doesn't get splatted.) Put the symbols on shields and have them activate on sight. If you have, say, 100 shields lining the entrance hall to Grofhamr, then even an undead that passes their save on everything except a natural 1 will be destroyed 95% of the time.
  * They have access via merchants to infinite amounts of adamantine armour. Using *Animate Object* and the Hourglass, then stacking *Hardening* on the armour, create practically-indestructible shock troops. For bonus points, fill the armour with Celestial Brilliance Bouncy Balls of Doom. Or fill the armour with papers of *Explosive Runes*, and order it to get close to high-value targets and then break a necklace of fireballs/other item that will set off the *Explosive Runes*.
  * Also cast Hardening and Animate Object on the Landguard's armour, with orders to get them out of combat once they're unconscious. This should hopefully preserve enough of their body that only a Raise Dead is needed rather than a full True Resurrection.
  * Again with abusing the Hourglass ( :D ) you could give everyone in Grofhamr both *Invisibility* and *See Invisible* permanently, which seems like an advantage.
  * Dust of Dryness as a bomb containing 100 gallons of holy water.
  * An Ioun Stone of +Int seems useful. Maybe some +Wis items would also be good so that he has the insight to spot flaws in plans. A pale green Ioun Stone grants +1 on all ability checks, which includes Knowledge (Tactics).
  * 48 *lyres of building* make any fortification impenetrable.
  * Combine *Discern Location* and *Find the Path* to get a route to Afi's phylactery that bypasses all of his traps.
  

• u/Prezombie:

  One thing no-one in this thread has suggested yet: Templates, the use and abuse of.
  
  We've already covered a lot of the polymorph abuse, but I think that this is a big enough thing to bring up again. 
  
  There's no RAW restriction against polymorphing into a (deep breath) Half Celestial, Half Gold Dragon, Half Silver Dragon, Half Copper Dragon, Half Bronze Dragon, Half Amethyst Dragon, Half White Dragon, Half Black Dragon, Half Red Dragon, Half Blue Dragon, Half Black Dragon, Half Green Dragon, Half-Giant, Half-Troll, Half-Illithid, Ti-Khana, Chimeric, Tauric, Voidmind, Titanic, House Cat.
  
  Sure, it doesn't have to be that absurd, but I think the idea of stacking all the half-dragon templates would be a great way to invite Tiamat and Bahamut to the party for a bit part. I have a hilarious mental image of Tiamat trying to facepalm but not having enough hands.
  

  • u/alexanderwales:

    This was always my favorite form of cheese in 3.5E. Templates are straight up broken, especially if you can stack them.
    

    • u/eaglejarl:

      That guy is 12/2 dragon and 15/2 overall.  *boggle*
      

      • u/Prezombie:

        20/2 actually.
        
        besides the half-*, Ti-khanas are half Yuan-ti, Chimerics have a monster goat head and a random Chromatic Dragon head, Taurics have a humanoid torso on top of the base creature torso, and the base creature itself.
        
        [Slightly inspired by Ellen "A fraction killed my family" Boorsen](http://leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=8)
        

• u/Traiden04:

  Permanency Tongues on everyone to allow all to understand everyone. Do magic items only have to be made, or can they be bought for I know of two ways to reduce the need for food water and sleep. Ion Stones, which can also stop the need for breathing too, and Rings of Sustenance. Also Feather Token, Trees would be great ways to have self defence options as well as offence for physical persons. With the permanency hourglass things like the huts and rope tricks can be made into lasting areas. Permanently cooling the water as well or keeping areas clean forever with prestidigitation and the Hourglass too. Can you make someone else draw from a Deck of Many things willed with only the The Card "Balance," to instantly turn without save the alignment of the Vampires and if you can manage it any of the Lich(Liches?)
  
  Philosopher's Stone mixed with cure potions to easily cast true resurrection if you can make them/buy them.
  
  Immovable Rods would be very helpful, as would Lordly Might would help for when you enter a Maze when tracking down the phylacteries. If you can create a powered up Rod of negation like you did for the Hourglass and Rule(Caster level 100, heh) it would also be a boon to use against the phylacteries.
  
  That is all I can think up off the top of my head and by no means ideas that would be allowed by any way other than RAW, which is the whole reason for the story in the first place.
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    The Eternal Hourglass seems like it should be utterly broken, but sadly it's not.  It doesn't 'make a spell permanent', it casts Permanency.  Permanency has a specific set of spells that it can effect, and most of the really interesting ones aren't on it.  If I had written it the other way it would be *so* abusable.  I kinda regret that I didn't, but I think it might be a complete story-breaker.
    
    There's no way to modify the set of cards in a DoMT, so you can't fill it with Balance (which would be cool).  You can, however, just repeatedly shove a Helm of Opposite Alignment on the person until it works.  HoOA is a one shot, though -- after it affects someone, it becomes non-magical.
    

    • u/khafra:

      > HoOA is a one shot, though -- after it affects someone, it becomes non-magical.
      
      Which is nice, because otherwise shoving the helmet on someone until it works would be as frustrating as trying to double-click an icon on a laggy system with a partially-broken mouse.
      

• u/legendofdrag:

  Step 1) Move everyone inside of a demiplane (This is mostly already done)
  
  
  Step 2) Get a critical amount of casters who can cast Locate City
  
  
  Step 3) Cast Locate City with explosive spell tacked on
  
  
  Step 4) Everything not in the demiplane takes 1000000d6 damage
  
  
  Step 5) ???
  
  
  Step 6) Profit!
  
  
  EDIT: Or failing that, since I just remembered explosive spell is metamagic, Dust of choking/sneezing has no save. It doesn't matter how high of a caster level you are, if it hits you, you're as good as dead. Wishing for an easily abusable magic item would do it too. Hell, it might be best just to detonate the planet with antimatter and move everybody to somewhere else.
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    "Hell, it might be best just to detonate the planet with antimatter and move everybody to somewhere else."
    
    [I would like to say:](#s "oy! Stop reading my story notes, bucko!  This is the plan that Jake came up with and them suppressed due to the collateral damage involved. He figures to relocate everyone to another planet and then blow this world by magicking up a couple thousand tons of antimatter")
    

• u/Empiricist_or_not:

  Big Booms:
  
  1. Rods from God via linked linked gates in space. Lots and lots of of Rods from God. 
  
  I'd hold this back as part of a coordinated decapitation strike on all know liches after scrying out the demilich or god they probably work for.
      I'm pretty sure kiloton to megaton level explosives will overcome the DR for any phylactery that is on the prime material plane.
  
  2.  Look at the *Teleport* and *Gate* spells for ways to relocate significant pieces of the sun  into hostile territory (but do the math first) you want toasted hostile countries, not the earth analog turning into mercury or slipping into the elemental plane of fire.
  
  3.  Polymorph any object created antimatter.  Can it create quark degenerative matter?  How much can you safely use on a target continent?
  

  • u/PeridexisErrant:

    > Can it create quark degenerative matter? How much can you safely use on a target continent?
    
    If you can get antimatter, presumably the answer is yes.  I imagine that there is no such thing as a safe dose.
    

• u/None:

  >4.d) Spells with obvious opposites have them. E.g, since Shrink Item is canon, Enlarge Item exists. Opposites have the same level and stat block as their canonical counterpart. A similar effect applies to the various Wall of X spells and other things similar to them; Rules As Written say "you can double the wall's area by halving its thickness." I will also allow halving the area in order to double its thickness, and I'll allow you to double / halve more than once. And, since the sizings on those walls say "up to x square feet", you can cast them as small as you want, or change the height and width however you like as long as you stay within the specified square footage—instead of a 10'x10' square you can have it be 5'x20', etc.
  
  Space elevator? Eternal night? Ridiculously long range lance?
  

  • u/mycroftxxx42:

    Giant *polished* (via prestidigitation) ultrathin walls of iron set at various geostationary points with slow rotations.  Everywhere the undead want to be now has 20 hours of daylight.
    

    • u/clawclawbite:

      Why would you need to polish them, as long as you created them in space, they would not rust, and as they are created with a fixed thickness, they are perfectly flat already, and don't need polishing.
      

• u/Prezombie:

  How about finding a way to experimentally determine if someone is a PC or an NPC? I know that Diplomacy doesn't work on PCs in RAW, but I'm not well versed enough in the RAW to find a more reliable way to find them from an in-universe perspective.
  
  Once you have a confirmed PC, you've got another counter to Diplomancy cheese, and the chance of actually having a communication line to the outside.
  
  I've got this wierd vision of some bard being a PC, and using Pinkie Pie-esque references to give coded messages which slip past the OOC filter.
  

• u/Vebeltast:

  *Blasphemy*/*Holy Word*/*Word of Chaos*/*Dictum* instagib everything around you that's 10 or more hit dice behind your caster level. No save. Caster levels are hilariously easy to increase: Orange Ioun Stones give an untyped bonus to caster level. Stack up Orange Ioun Stones until your caster level is in the low hundreds, then walk up to $target and cast an appropriate *Word*. Boom. Even works on Undead!
  
  ---
  
  Craft Contingent Spell lets you set any spell you know to be cast on a near-arbitrary trigger. For example, you can trigger a *Celerity* for whenever combat starts, ensuring you never lose initiative ever again. Or you can trigger an *Atonement* whenever you have to use *Blasphemy* while you're Good, so that you can use your *Word*s without having to worry about your alignment. Or, for that matter, you could just set a *Word* to go off whenever a high-level undead is within the AoE. Cast *Heal*s whenever you're at low health. Cast *Delay Death* whenever you're about to die.
  
  ---
  
  *Magic Mouth* can trigger off arbitrarily complex audible signals. It can produce audible signals. *Magic Mouths* can trigger each other. Build a computer.
  
  ---
  
  Things which have had *Temporal Stasis* cast on them are completely invulnerable modulo *Dispel Magic*. Use *Animate Object* to animate a giant folded-up tarp, have the animated tarp origami itself into a castle, *Temporal Stasis* your new castle. Or door. Or helmet. Whatever.
  
  Quintessence is similarly fun.
  
  ---
  
  If you want mechanical energy, *Heat Metal* when cast underwater instantly boils all of the water nearby. An acre or two of chicken wire could easily power a gigawatt-range reactor. If you don't want to go through the trouble of electrical generation, just use a ring gate to connect your fuck-off-huge steam turbine to your load through a *Temporal Stasis*'d shaft. Side note: when you're doing stuff like this, it's much easier to build open-cycle systems using Decanters on the input side and *Dispel Water* or Spheres of Annihilation on the output side.
  
  ---
  
  ...*Goodberry*. How the hell did everybody forget *Goodberry*. A single command-word item of it, at maximum throughput, can permanently feed 10k people. And berries are way more tasty and logistically convenient than protein sludge.
  
  ---
  
  *Major Creation* can make just about anything you want. Including "rare metals" and other odd stuff. It's temporary - one round per level - but it significantly lowers the level requirement for antimatter bombing runs. Other fun things to create: Hydrazine (fuck you, Tsiolkovsky), enriched uranium (what happens to fission and activation products when the original uranium goes away?), 10 cubic feet of photons (IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZOR).
  
  ---
  
  You can make any spell into a trap. Traps can be reusable, auto-resetting, and - most importantly - auto-*casting*. Give them super-low search, avoid, disarm DCs and so on, and your magic items now cost a thousandth as much XP. And take a thousandth the time to craft. And don't require people to stand there and set them off. Even better, if you've built yourself a *Magic Mouth* computer, you can use traps for physical I/O.
  
  ---
  
  If there are *any* infinite planes *anywhere* in the multiverse, you can use *Planar Binding* to summon *whatever you want*. Because no matter how small the measure of your target being is, if it's nonzero (and, in DND terms, "nonzero measure" means "you can build it as a character, the build is the story") there's a concrete instance out there somewhere for you to summon. Have fun!
  

• u/mhd-hbd:

  I would pull out all the stops. First I would use one wish to grant myself an irremovable ring of at-will free-action extraordinary ability wishing (*not* an infinite loop, just at-will spellcasting and item creation)
  
  With that I would either set out to turn my level 0 commoner executive assistant into The Word (specialized caster who can cast divine spells at caster level 122) and then just straight up kill the offending gods of death.
  
  And we would be [The Wish and The Word](http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Wish_and_the_Word_%283.5e_Optimized_Character_Build%29), god-killers extraordinaire.
  

---