mirror of
https://github.com/wassname/scrape_r_rational.git
synced 2026-10-30 13:40:12 +08:00
15 KiB
15 KiB
The Two Year Emperor, Ch63 - A Transhumanist Discussion
Post:
Comments:
-
u/alexanderwales:
I am curious how they plan to kill a god, which is one of the hardest things to do in D&D - orders of magnitude more difficult than killing a Tarrasque. I halfway think that they're going to try some version of *Mindscrape* on him, but I don't know for sure.-
u/ulyssessword:
It wouldn't be easy. [Here](http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm) is a list of the traits of a D&D deity, with Neklos probably being rank 16-20. The only way I can think of is tens (or hundreds) of thousands of readied actions, each chipping away at his thousands of hitpoints, and carefully chosen to avoid his immunities and get enough natural 20's by sheer statistics to overcome his saves, AC, and/or spell resistance. If Flobovia contains Complete Arcane content, I'd say [Orb of Force](http://dndtools.eu/spells/complete-arcane--55/orb-force--470/) is perfect, 10d6 damage with no save or SR. 1/20 casters would automatically hit the ranged touch attack, meaning that 10,000 castings (the most that fits in a 300' radius) would deal about 17k damage, enough to kill most gods.- u/eaglejarl:
> It wouldn't be easy. Here is a list of the traits of a D&D deity, with Neklos probably being rank 16-20. "Rank 16-20: Called greater deities, these entities may have **millions of mortal worshipers,**..." Neklos has a billion worshippers in Anundjå alone. He is most definitely a rank 20 greater god. [Orb of Force] Wow. That's an option I hadn't considered. Thanks for the pointer.
- u/eaglejarl:
-
-
u/eaglejarl:
Today's chapter brought to you in spite of 17 hours of jetlag and a highly addictive series of books, "The Council Wars" series by John Ringo. Enjoy! -
u/Chronophilia:
*Polymorph Any Object* can be cast twice to make it permanent? I think it just edged into the lead as Most Broken Spell in D&D. Jake's strategy is interesting. I see why he leapt to the "let's kill Death" plan: if Afi ever succeeds at getting his shard removed, Neklos is going to be pissed beyond pissed. Annoying the gods is never a good idea, so Afi can expect to be obliterated shortly afterwards... unless something happens to prevent Neklos from ever doing that. Killing him isn't the only way, but it is the most obvious. Also *Mindscrape 2.0* would be useful for purging Fragment, if Jake can get a copy. It's getting hard to keep track of whose side we're on. Jake would like Afi to become a true puppet of Neklos, because then he'd only have to deal with an invincible god of death instead of that plus the greatest military mind of the last thousand years. Jake would prefer Neklos be killed and Afi be free of his influence, so Afi can dedicate himself to research and not scouring the living from the world. On the other hand, killing Afi is as simple a matter as yelling "Hey Neklos, guess what your avatar's been doing behind your back!", while killing Neklos is... rather more difficult. Summoning him into a canyon full of level 60 casters under your command is probably a good place to start, though.-
u/eaglejarl:
> Polymorph Any Object can be cast twice to make it permanent? I think it just edged into the lead as Most Broken Spell in D&D. Yep. If you, say, PAO a pebble into a human then it lasts for 20 minutes...but if you PAO a human into a human, it's permanent. So, PAO the pebble into a human, then PAO *that* human into itself. Boom, permanent. > On the other hand, killing Afi is as simple a matter as yelling "Hey Neklos, guess what your avatar's been doing behind your back!", Indeed. The problem with that is that doing it means giving away your position to Neklos, which tends to result in squishage. (Currently Shailos, Arros, and a few other gods are working together to keep Our Heroes out of Neklos's sight.) The heroes actually have several ways to win, or at least better their position, at this point: 1. Remove Neklos. Afi will then *probably* go back to doing research instead of trying to conquer the world. 1. Remove Afi. Now the other Lich Kings become much less engaged (except when Neklos is directly supervising), and Neklos is in charge directly. Good thing, because he'd be a crappy general. 1. Reduce Neklos's power enough that the Team Good gods beat him. 1. Cause enough dissension in the ranks that Afi gets tied down fighting internal battles instead of fighting our heroes. > Summoning [Neklos] into a canyon full of level 60 casters under your command is probably a good place to start, though. Heh. Yeah. Although, you'd probably still lose. Neklos would use his Alter Reality power to simulate a Celerity, giving him a standard action before anyone else, even if it's a surprise round. He then casts Time Stop, giving him 2-5 rounds. He spends the first round of the Time Stop being dazed from the Celerity, then uses the second round to cast another Time Stop, which resets the counter to "2-5 rounds". He uses the first round to do something, then Time Stops again. Lather, rinse, repeat until you're all dead. Although...if you got a surprise round on him and had enough firepower, MAYBE you could get it done.-
u/None:
[deleted]-
u/eaglejarl:
Hm. Celerity: "This spell works like lesser celerity, except that you pull even more time into the present. When you cast this spell, you can immediately take a standard action, as if you had readied an action. You can even interrupt another creature's turn when you cast this spell. However, after you take the standard action granted by this spell, you are dazed until the end of your next turn." It's an immediate action to cast. "An immediate action is a swift action that can be performed at any time—even if it’s not your turn." The way it reads to me is: 1. Casters ready an action: "Shoot Neklos as soon as he appears." 1. Neklos appears. 1. Casters readied actions trigger. 1. Neklos takes an immediate action (which can be done at any time, even on not-your-turn) to pre-empt the casters and cast Celerity, giving him a standard action. 1. Neklos uses that action to cast Time Stop. Neklos wins. ...unless, of course, it's a surprise round and Neklos were not aware of his attackers, then he would not be able to act, at all. Hence he couldn't use an immediate action to cast Celerity, and therefore he would lose. ...unless, of course, he had used his Alter Reality power to cast Foresight some time in the last few hours. In that case, he can't be surprised, so he *would* have the immediate action, so he would win. ...although, of course, even if he *hadn't* cast Foresight, his portfolio is still Death. Since he's divine rank 20, that means that his Portfolio Sense ability is: "Greater deities automatically sense any event that involves their portfolios, regardless of the number of people involved. In addition, their senses extend one week into the past and one week into the future for every divine rank they have." So, he's known for 20 weeks that he was going to be killed, and can therefore act to prevent himself from being killed. So, Neklos wins. So, yeah. I think Neklos wins if you try to just ambush him and shoot him to death.-
u/None:
[deleted]- u/eaglejarl:
*snicker* I'd say you're right on all of this. Which just means that Neklos gets to freeze time and keep it frozen for as long as he'd like. So, Neklos wins. Now, here's the interesting thing: two gods with Alter Reality. Both decide to use it to cast Celerity / Time Stop. What happens? Note that I'm not entirely certain that Time Stop would freeze time re other gods. I think they would probably be able to enter the TS with you. Not sure if RAW supports that, but if not then I would houserule it in because otherwise it's too easy for one god to take out another.
- u/eaglejarl:
-
-
-
u/Putnam3145:
> He then casts Time Stop, giving him 2-5 rounds. No, it gives him 5 rounds; greater deities (16-20, which Neklos is definitely) get all of spell rolls maximized. -
u/Nepene:
How to kill a god. Cast statue on a person (or a PAO insect if you want to be sneaky). They can now, as a free action, turn into a living statue or back, and their equipment and garments change with them. Use true creation or whatnot to create a sphere with anti matter inside. Have the person take said object and turn into a statue of granite. Have a companion then smash up the object that previously contained antimatter. As a free action the person can turn back into a human and an object that is made of antimatter and is mixed with matter and make a big boom. Suppose instead you want to just kill the god. Cast crown of flame, a spell with an emanation effect of 2d6 damage to evil undead, on 2000 commoners. Use PAO to turn them into lice or some similar insect. Tell them to stand on a spell component and put them in your spell pouch, which blocks line of sight and the emanation. Find Neklos and get within ten feet. As a free action, faster than the immediate action of celerity, draw out your spell component and do a minimum of 2000 damage per round.
-
-
-
u/INeedAUsernameToo:
The plan: Kill god of death, promote the newly Good resurrected god of secrets to the position. Easy peasy. -
u/None:
[deleted]- u/eaglejarl:
That, of course, assumes that Jake intends to kill him. I never said that was the plan, and neither did Jake. :)
- u/eaglejarl:
-
u/tilkau:
Amusing chapter. One error I spotted: > First we made ourselves amulets of Mind Blank so we couldn't be detected via divinations, then we set up Permanent **Telephatic** Bonds connecting each member of the group to each other member .. enabling the instant transmission of cellulose.. with your MIND. Oh wait, liches don't get cellulose. I guess they'll have to go for a different plan.-
u/eaglejarl:
"instant transmission of cellulose"??? I would think that "telephatic" would be "the ability to, at range, use spoken language that is intended for satisfying social tasks instead of communication or inquiry." So, without even being present they can say, "Hi, how are you?"- u/tilkau:
Heh. I have to confess that I was totally ignorant that phatic was actually a word, so have an upvote. (The idea that came to mind when I read it was actually 'instant transmission of bass'.)
- u/tilkau:
-
u/drageuth2:
The two liches re-pao from mite to humanoid somewhere private. One takes off the amulet and hands it to its partner. It then sends its messages and immediately begins tapdancing. The other lich has a readied action, to put the amulet back on its partner upon them tapdancing. Since readied actions always happen immediately before the trigger, the lich will only be vulnerable for the brief fraction of a turn that it takes to send the message. Probability of detection by anything short of a god is pretty dang low.-
u/eaglejarl:
Actually, they don't even have to re-PAO. They just had to have made the amulets while they were in dust mite form so that the amulets are sized for dust mites.-
u/drageuth2:
Now you have me picturing tapdancing dust mites. "Hello mah baby, hello mah honey, hello my ragtime gaaaaal!'- u/eaglejarl:
This made me laugh out loud. Thank you. :) Ah, looney tunes. You were the greatest.
- u/eaglejarl:
-
-
-
-
u/Zephyr1011:
It took me an embarrassingly long time to notice that it was called transhumanist because they discuss killing death. And should Jake not POPE himself before making such adventurous plans? He doesn't know it will fail, and a plan to kill a god requires as high mental stats as he can acquire I have absolutely no idea how Jake plans to kill Deathboy, but given that the gods appear to have insanely OP abilities, i doubt it will be anything to do with causing damage in a direct fight. Having an audience itself seems quite risky, unless he gets a guarantee of safety beforehand.-
u/eaglejarl:
> It took me an embarrassingly long time to notice that it was called transhumanist because they discuss killing death. :) > And should Jake not POPE himself before making such adventurous plans? They just created the POPEs today. Thomas forbade Jake from using them until tomorrow, once at least a hundred people have gone through them with no ill effects. > He doesn't know it will fail, and a plan to kill a god requires as high mental stats as he can acquire The POPEs actually can't help his INT; that's already maxed out as far as Wish is concerned. They could affect his WIS and CHA though. > I have absolutely no idea how Jake plans to kill Deathboy, Are you sure he plans to? ;) (Go back and read carefully.)-
u/tilkau:
> Are you sure he plans to? ;) My only conclusion here is that he intends to convince Neklos that getting lost is a superior option. Not sure how you'd accomplish that, but I did notice that involuntary banishment is explicitly impossible. Actually, the other option I can think of is to convince the pantheon at large that it is optimal to put Neklos down right now . But that seems very difficult (getting any of their attention for a brief period seems reasonably easy, actually getting enough attention to convince them without being smited does not. Also IMO Jake and co. do not have any resources of a type that they would regard as a meaningful bribe, and finally, Neklos' rank implies that it would be very hard to do this organization without inadvertantly warning Neklos of it.) -
u/Zephyr1011:
WIS seems pretty useful for a plan of this nature. I had meant that shouldn't Jake wait a day to POPE himself before making such plans? And has Jake tried asking fragment about making custom items capable of granting more stat points? Jake asks what would happen if Deadboy wasn't around any more which, combined with your subtle hints, seems less of a euphemism and more of a plan to get him to leave their planet or plane alone. Which seems a lot more plausible for them to do. I might have guessed that Jake would suggest Neklos move everything to another planet so they can live in peace, but Jake forgot that and all similar plans. No other plans spring to mind.- u/tilkau:
> WIS seems pretty useful for a plan of this nature. I had meant that shouldn't Jake wait a day to POPE himself before making such plans? Going from previous trends in this fic, I suspect that Jake doesn't have enough WIS to realize that he needs more WIS.
- u/tilkau:
-
-