my players turned Arabelle into a wereraven and taught her how to steal but she keeps going into lawful good rampages and giving their money to the poor at night, or embarassing them in the middle of otherwise tense conversations, or dive bombing the warlock and shifting back to human form, landing on her shoulders and once or twice knocking her over (warlock is a vistani who is related to her - or as I have Arabelle say "big sister")
when they killed Arrigal in front of her I was so happy because she birded away so I could literally use her to take the party where I wanted them to go - it's not a railroad if the party is using Locate Animals or Plants to pursue a pissed off vistana
(I'm using the Tasha's/Dragons of Icespire Peak Sidekicks statblocks so she isn't a useless fated ally, at this point she's a level 4 spellcaster with the divination Portent feature bolted on)
So, a friend of mine is DMing Strahd and after one of the players dropped out after the first session, let me sub in. I have intentionally avoided spoilers about this module for YEARS and I'm psyched to get the chance to play it. I'm a posh young nobleman from Waterdeep whose Wizard sister disappeared in some sort of magic accident. He pulled some strings with his family to get an old IOU from a Djinn. He first tried to wish her back but was told that she was trapped somewhere and the djinn's magic could not retrieve her. Instead the djinn made a pact with the man and sent him to Ravenloft, where his sister is stuck. He's been there for a few weeks when the party arrives and has had no luck finding her. So he's a genie pact warlock from Tasha's, and my plan is to build him as an illusionist infiltrator with Mask of Many Faces and Silent Image and such.
Anyway, it's been a couple of sessions. We had a fortune telling that, based on the detail, the cards, and the fact that the cards are shown on the module's cover, is very important. Last session we headed to Vallaki but took a short detour.
We spotted a building by the side of the road and wanted to be sure we were on the right path, so we decided to stop by. Turns out it's a mill, which we heard about in one of the cards. Supposedly there's a sword there, which, neat, I guess. I'm hesitant to go inside (magic is pretty new to my character and he's still weirded out by the fortune lady's weird eye thing) but a couple of the others are all about it. I consent to come in and briefly ask for directions, decline the pastries after seeing the gross conditions of the kitchen, and depart, along with two others. The group's Bard decides he wants to find this sword, so he asks the old woman to show him around after casting a charm spell. His revelation that whoops, these people are probably cannibals and are for sure baking those pastries from people does not dissuade him from going off on his own.
Long story short, the party is split into 4 groups. Bard is on the top floor by himself with the old lady, the Monk and Cleric on the second floor with the daughters, the Paladin on the bottom floor alone, and my Warlock and the Rogue outside. That's when the Bard decides to try and cast Sleep.
Predictably, things fell apart pretty quickly. We only got a single round of combat, but one attack from one of the daughters managed to nesrly 1 shot the Monk, and the Cleric is at half HP from a Magic Missile from the other. Meanwhile my Warlock has only heard some crashing noises and is assuming these uncouth hicks he's been traveling with have imposed on the old woman and broken something, and is in no hurry to reenter. Considering how little time he's known them, it's tempting to just have him dip out and leave them to die.
At the end of the session, we're all calling out the Bard for being too dumb to live. The Monk/Cleric were desperately calling for the Bard to give up and leave while they could but didn't want to just leave without him. I have a feeling he might be rolling a new character next session. At least if/when we come back to the mill, my Warlock can be someone completely different. I'm thinking I might recommend the group flee, then return alone later disguised as the Bard's father and offer to pay a ransom if he's still alive.
I had no idea the sword even could be in the mill, boy .... I do not agree with that decision, it's a recipe for a very early end to the campaign or trivializing the rest of what is supposed to be a dark and oppressive campaign
Personally I don't think the bard is being that much of an idiot, given the information available, obviously metagaming the nature of the old women sleep won't work but it's a fair assessment for a baby adventurer that sleep will pretty much always work on old women 100% of the time
I had no idea the sword even could be in the mill, boy .... I do not agree with that decision, it's a recipe for a very early end to the campaign or trivializing the rest of what is supposed to be a dark and oppressive campaign
Personally I don't think the bard is being that much of an idiot, given the information available, obviously metagaming the nature of the old women sleep won't work but it's a fair assessment for a baby adventurer that sleep will pretty much always work on old women 100% of the time
My cards put both of the good items inside Stradh's cattle, and the infodump at Argynvostholst.
I had no idea the sword even could be in the mill, boy .... I do not agree with that decision, it's a recipe for a very early end to the campaign or trivializing the rest of what is supposed to be a dark and oppressive campaign
Personally I don't think the bard is being that much of an idiot, given the information available, obviously metagaming the nature of the old women sleep won't work but it's a fair assessment for a baby adventurer that sleep will pretty much always work on old women 100% of the time
My cards put both of the good items inside Stradh's cattle, and the infodump at Argynvostholst.
I rigged the reading for my players except for the chosen ally (since I was going to make the chosen ally roughly the same level of usefulness regardless, they got Arabelle, who is fairly weak but Strahd would never hurt a Vistani that didnt not first attack him, and she never will - so she's basically a minor support wizard with plot armor) so I could have the chosen items be scattered around
for example the sword is in the hands of my Erinyes burgomaster of Tuefeldorf, a creature of Law, Strahd trusted her to hold it for him knowing that she is physically incapable of breaking her promise to never give the sword to enemies of Barovia (which, you've already spotted a potential non combat way of obtaining it, if you can convince her that enemy is Strahd)
I had no idea the sword even could be in the mill, boy .... I do not agree with that decision, it's a recipe for a very early end to the campaign or trivializing the rest of what is supposed to be a dark and oppressive campaign
Personally I don't think the bard is being that much of an idiot, given the information available, obviously metagaming the nature of the old women sleep won't work but it's a fair assessment for a baby adventurer that sleep will pretty much always work on old women 100% of the time
Okay well keep in mind I did say I have avoided any spoilers on this module so please continue to be at least this vague or vaguer. You have already clued me in that the sword is not a metaphor and is very powerful.
As to the Bard's stupidity, it was more about starting an engagement when the party is a) completely unaware he's doing it and b) spread into 4 separate subgroups of various general awareness of the situation at all.
Bard figured out pretty quickly that the pastries are made of people, and made one attempt to communicate that to the other two people inside, which failed. I would think a sensible person would say "okay, yeah, let's get out of here, get the group together, and come back with a real plan later." Instead he decided to ask to see the rest of the mill, with his compatriots wondering why, and allowed himself to get completely isolated from the others. There's "adventurers don't know monsters and players shouldn't metagame" and then there's "how did you make it to level 3 without learning not to split the party like this?" For the record, I didn't know what they were, and I was able to piece together that sticking around was probably a mistake.
When the other two downstairs figured out what the ladies were up to, they repeatedly called up to the Bard and asked him to leave with them, but he ignored them to go further upstairs. And of course, nobody could come up with a good way to clue in the outdoors half of the party without leaving the Bard behind.
So yeah, now we're contemplating leaving him behind.
I had no idea the sword even could be in the mill, boy .... I do not agree with that decision, it's a recipe for a very early end to the campaign or trivializing the rest of what is supposed to be a dark and oppressive campaign
Personally I don't think the bard is being that much of an idiot, given the information available, obviously metagaming the nature of the old women sleep won't work but it's a fair assessment for a baby adventurer that sleep will pretty much always work on old women 100% of the time
Okay well keep in mind I did say I have avoided any spoilers on this module so please continue to be at least this vague or vaguer. You have already clued me in that the sword is not a metaphor and is very powerful.
As to the Bard's stupidity, it was more about starting an engagement when the party is a) completely unaware he's doing it and b) spread into 4 separate subgroups of various general awareness of the situation at all.
Bard figured out pretty quickly that the pastries are made of people, and made one attempt to communicate that to the other two people inside, which failed. I would think a sensible person would say "okay, yeah, let's get out of here, get the group together, and come back with a real plan later." Instead he decided to ask to see the rest of the mill, with his compatriots wondering why, and allowed himself to get completely isolated from the others. There's "adventurers don't know monsters and players shouldn't metagame" and then there's "how did you make it to level 3 without learning not to split the party like this?" For the record, I didn't know what they were, and I was able to piece together that sticking around was probably a mistake.
When the other two downstairs figured out what the ladies were up to, they repeatedly called up to the Bard and asked him to leave with them, but he ignored them to go further upstairs. And of course, nobody could come up with a good way to clue in the outdoors half of the party without leaving the Bard behind.
So yeah, now we're contemplating leaving him behind.
That makes sense!
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Am I crazy/missing something, or do Necromancers have terrible options for dealing with Undead?
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
Splitting the party is almost always a bad idea. Its only right that the Bard bears the brunt of that lesson.
Our CoS's group experience was maybe a little similar but had a better outcome. We knew, via the tarot reading, that something of value was in the old mill, but not exactly what (we got something other than what your party got). So we were a bit more careful. Our party's Paladin also groked that the meat pie seller on the streets of Barovia was not what she seemed and he ran her out of town. So when our party got there, it was always going to be a throw down. Most of the party went in the front door together while the shadow monk went to the top floor and in a window, foiling the baddies surprise attack and causing a shit show. BUT he had cast silence on himself to be more sneaky and that was the only thing that saved out bacon in the ensuing scrap. I don't know what your DM had for you, but our foes were quite hampered by not being able to use verbal components for thier spellcasting. If it wasn't for that Silence spell? Our 4th level party would have been tomorrows lunch.
My party got to Barovia at the end of the last session after running through Death House and Morgantha was the first person in Barovia that was willing to give them the time of day. The PCs were starving, cold and soaked from constant rain, and exhausted. So when they met the kind, little-ole granny type who was so much cheerier than the rest of the town, they happily accepted her free meat pie samples. The windmill ought to be a lot of fun...
My players had split the party with 3 of them hanging out with Ismark and Irena, and 2 went for a walk to the bar and ran into the pie peddler. They each bought one, but only one ate it, then demanded the other one. I had them rolling various checks as they grappled for it and then when they both rolled poorely the pie went sailing into the air and feel on the front where a random Barovian starving peasant snatched it and gulfed it down.
My party got to Barovia at the end of the last session after running through Death House and Morgantha was the first person in Barovia that was willing to give them the time of day. The PCs were starving, cold and soaked from constant rain, and exhausted. So when they met the kind, little-ole granny type who was so much cheerier than the rest of the town, they happily accepted her free meat pie samples. The windmill ought to be a lot of fun...
we're 25 sessions in and the rogue keeps heading back to the windmill for more
he hands them out to npcs
he knows what's in them, he hasnt told anyone
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
I may have misread how the Rug of Smothering works, but my players really hate carpets now
(Can a party mate save someone who is being smothered by the rug by grappling the rug itself? What I did was just have them succeed on a contested grapple to give the victim advantage on escaping)
Am I crazy/missing something, or do Necromancers have terrible options for dealing with Undead?
Animate Dead lets you animate a zombie or skeleton (which should be obvious, but hey - stuff like 'Chill Touch' exists in this school), but it also lets you control them.
Should a necromancer encounter some 'wild' skeletons or zombies that have been released from the command of an Animate Dead spell, then they can lay claim to them.
Create Undead works the same way with the higher level stuff.
It's actually easier to steal skeletons and zombies than it is to raise them. The spell raises one, but dominates four per cast.
Chill touch does quite well for stopping the regeneration on things like vampire spawn, and they're still wizards. No one ever complained about a necromancer throwing a fireball, whilst cackling behind an army of skeletons.
Animate Dead does not let you control undead. It only lets you re-assert control of creatures you have raised and only lets you do this within a 24 hour window. Free'd undead are free forever.
Necromancy Wizards however DO get Command Undead at 14th level, which lets them force any undead to make a charisma save against their spell save DC or be controlled. (Intelligent undead have advantage against this save and can repeat the save every hour to break free) A creature that makes its save is immune and you can only ever control one undead at a time like this but you have no limit to the number of times you may do this per day. And a captured unintelligent undead is yours forever
edit: there is no other option to break free so this is, functionally a save or die for any undead any CR. A lich has a +3 charisma save and well probably will have saved one of its legendary saves for this but... still
IMO all the skeletons and zombies in the world are because necromancers animated them to like, go make a cake or something, and then told them to "just go in the sewer and stay there forever or whatever". And he does that like every day. Cut to 200 years later, some otyughs have moved in, and there's a spectator that has taken up residence, secreting away some magic item it's been guarding - the necromancer has long since hit lichdom and moved on
An earthquake breaks a hole in the place, and skeletons occasionally wander out, attacking villagers, and everyone completely misinterprets this as the spectator being "The boss" of the undead or whatever and hires adventurers to put an end to its evil
Now the question is, if you turn undead, do your property rights go away? If not, you could argue those skeletons are the rightful owners of the places they guard, if not from actually being their owners when still alive then just because of long term squatting laws.
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
edited March 2021
Another different question - how do you handle the progress of a player whose character is supposedly very creative, but the player themselves aren't? My artificer player has some so called POC (EDIT: Proof Of Concept) project to prove her theories correct (Geothermal energy as alternative energy source for magic shit), but they can't come up with specifics as to what the POC is (eg a magic gun, a perpetual motion machine, etc). How can I help them? It's a bit too late to drop the POC angle.
- Give out a list of possible POCs, they pick one
- Leave it vague
- ???
Animate Dead does not let you control undead. It only lets you re-assert control of creatures you have raised and only lets you do this within a 24 hour window. Free'd undead are free forever.
Necromancy Wizards however DO get Command Undead at 14th level, which lets them force any undead to make a charisma save against their spell save DC or be controlled. (Intelligent undead have advantage against this save and can repeat the save every hour to break free) A creature that makes its save is immune and you can only ever control one undead at a time like this but you have no limit to the number of times you may do this per day. And a captured unintelligent undead is yours forever
edit: there is no other option to break free so this is, functionally a save or die for any undead any CR. A lich has a +3 charisma save and well probably will have saved one of its legendary saves for this but... still
This and possibly Chill Touch seem like the only actual anti-undead spells specific to the Necromancy path though. In some past editions it felt like there were more options within the Necromancy school to use against the Undead. There isn't really a good way to play an Abhorsen type Necromancer in 5e currently, as far as I can tell.
Lord_Asmodeus on
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
Now the question is, if you turn undead, do your property rights go away? If not, you could argue those skeletons are the rightful owners of the places they guard, if not from actually being their owners when still alive then just because of long term squatting laws.
Homesteading requires you to constantly live there for a period of time.
Gonna have some issues with that "live" verb there.
Now the question is, if you turn undead, do your property rights go away? If not, you could argue those skeletons are the rightful owners of the places they guard, if not from actually being their owners when still alive then just because of long term squatting laws.
Homesteading requires you to constantly live there for a period of time.
Gonna have some issues with that "live" verb there.
Wouldn't a law be more likely to use "reside" or "occupy"?
Another different question - how do you handle the progress of a player whose character is supposedly very creative, but the player themselves aren't? My artificer player has some so called POC (EDIT: Proof Of Concept) project to prove her theories correct (Geothermal energy as alternative energy source for magic shit), but they can't come up with specifics as to what the POC is (eg a magic gun, a perpetual motion machine, etc). How can I help them? It's a bit too late to drop the POC angle.
- Give out a list of possible POCs, they pick one
- Leave it vague
- ???
I think either of your listed options could work perfectly fine depending on how far you intend to develop the plans. If it never has to be built then it can just be an amazing cool idea without needing to be defined. My thought would be talk with the player and see how she feels about it. It could be she would very much welcome a helping hand in defining what it is after a bit of back and forth. She might even be happier with something less abstract
Magic being an element really gives a lot of room to work with on this. I had a similar concept I was spinning out until I realized my endgame was having steam power plants that were produced more power than a nuclear power plant in the real world. It turns out making mundane objects with magical material really fucks with the physics.
Now the question is, if you turn undead, do your property rights go away? If not, you could argue those skeletons are the rightful owners of the places they guard, if not from actually being their owners when still alive then just because of long term squatting laws.
Skeletons and zombies don't have a high enough Int to argue that case. Vampires and lichs are powerful enough they don't need to.
I'm playing my Avernus character as being VERY slapdash with understanding of magic and reality, I am a bard after all. I come up with solutions that obviously won't work to problems, but create new problems instead. For example, I use my Mystery Key item on literally everything, and the DM keeps having me roll. Someone paralyzed? Mystery key in their mouth
For example, I mentioned before we found a time locked woman in a dungeon, apparently dead but she's been there for hundreds of years and looks alive. Devils were about so I stuffed her in my bag of holding.
Well cut to last session, I obtained a circlet of intellect through a theft on a vampire, and had an idea.
I assembled the party, none of them knowing what I'd been up to (in this...floating city in hell that's slowly being torn apart). I withdrew the nameless hero from my bag, who had hastily been redressed in the suit of flaming fist platemail that I found (I cleaned the gore of the original occupant off of it). I drew forth the circlet of intellect, and I announced to the paladin and the gathered Flaming Fist and faithful in this temple that I figured out how to bring the hero back to life (since she's frozen in time she can't normally be resurrected or anything), and this legendary dragon slayer would be of great aid to us shortly
I used animating performance on the body, and stuck a circlet of intellect on her. The DM looked at the statblock for animated item, and the reference art, and decided that an animated human-shaped object would act like a human and that the item doesn't say it can't speak. So the woman floats up to her feet and starts doing a jig and waves to everyone and says "WOW this is different I can talk! I can talk! I CAN SING!" and she starts singing and dancing (this isnt my first time doing this, previously I'd used the animated body as a door-stop to block some minotaurs because the DM said the body was indestructible, but no talking that time, just dancing - but the whole party didnt know about that)
I get her to stop, the faithful think I've just accomplished a miracle, my character realizes this isn't what I intended, I've now created sapient life and it's going to die in one hour unless I keep spending third level spell slots to keep it alive (which buys us 3 hours), the high priest lady is on her knees weeping, the party paladin is FUMING but he doesn't want to destroy the hope I've created in these people by revealing that it didn't work at all
She says her name is (at this point the DM plays a soundboard clip of some chimes and a guitar string)
edit: the wizard is a chronomancer from EGTW and this hero being time frozen is clearly a quest the DM inserted for his benefit, since he has to research how to unfreeze this potential ally. There are plot hooks that suggest Tiamat is responsible for this statis, and wouldnt you know it we have a map to Tiamat. In game my character asked him if my plan would work and he said "Oh yeah totally". The DM asked "dont you want to roll arcana?" and he said "nah, but I would like to roll deception" - my bard doesnt have good insight
Another different question - how do you handle the progress of a player whose character is supposedly very creative, but the player themselves aren't? My artificer player has some so called POC (EDIT: Proof Of Concept) project to prove her theories correct (Geothermal energy as alternative energy source for magic shit), but they can't come up with specifics as to what the POC is (eg a magic gun, a perpetual motion machine, etc). How can I help them? It's a bit too late to drop the POC angle.
- Give out a list of possible POCs, they pick one
- Leave it vague
- ???
Ahhh the age old problem in DnD in that it’s impossible to role play someone with better mental stats than the player possesses.
Leaving it vague is totally possible but giving a list is a lot better. The problem with vague is that you cannot realize the project and so it must always be a nebulous goal. And as such you cannot utilize the plot point later. The list let’s the player complete their goal and advance their character.
Another different question - how do you handle the progress of a player whose character is supposedly very creative, but the player themselves aren't? My artificer player has some so called POC (EDIT: Proof Of Concept) project to prove her theories correct (Geothermal energy as alternative energy source for magic shit), but they can't come up with specifics as to what the POC is (eg a magic gun, a perpetual motion machine, etc). How can I help them? It's a bit too late to drop the POC angle.
- Give out a list of possible POCs, they pick one
- Leave it vague
- ???
I think this question asks some other questions, that might help you and the player figure out what they're building. What is the current "energy source for magic shit" that geothermal energy is an alternative to? What are the problems with the current energy source that the artificer is trying to solve? What kind of "magic shit" are they trying to do?
And then beyond that, you have the question of real world analogues. In the real world, energy sources like this aren't exactly portable. Is this magical version of a geothermal power plant portable somehow? Or is it powering their lab back home? Have they invented a way to convert geothermal energy into a magic battery of sorts? Or is their power plant providing the energy for a spell in their lab to last much longer than it would otherwise or something?
I don't know, I could almost see approaching this like an episode of Magical Shark Tank. Your artificer is standing in front of a council of wizards, and is about to pitch her new geothermal invention. What questions would the Council of Sharks ask before they're willing to invest their astral diamonds into her startup?
Usually you can roleplay better mental stats than you have by working backwards from the conclusion, but it requires some DM cooperation.
So, geothermal energy as a replacement for magic or as a source powering magic; what's the downside of the current way of magic that geothermal energy would fix and work your way backwards from that.
So think, no Wild Magic Surges, no counterspelling, no somatic, verbal or material (or more likely in case of material, different) components are a few ways to go with that.
Downsides, like Denada says, would be that geothermal energy is not exactly portable or easy to use, but as an energy source it would probably be stable and reliable for a long time, so use it to fuel spells that otherwise would have a wizard needing to cast them every day (or in some cases every day for a year to make them permanent) like teleportation circles, wards, private sanctum or more disturbing create undead. If you really want to go crazy with it: create food and water.
So the proof of concept can be a simple device that would be able to create a low level spell effect permanently, but it needs a geothermal power source, so the Artificer will have to travel to places to test this out, either volcanoes, geysers or travelling to other planets. (Let's say the effect is "Create Minor Illusion" that becomes permanently powered by dropping a small device in a volcano that creates a giant image of the gnomish inventor winking above the volcano).
Now the player should come up with the details on their own, but you can guide them by asking them questions about their invention, forcing them to think about what their device does and how it works. Ask questions that are character-related; did the Artificer had a spell fail in their past with consequences and is that the reason they are now looking for a more reliable method. If yes, what happened and the device they will be designing will probably be based on that specific spell as PoC.
Another different question - how do you handle the progress of a player whose character is supposedly very creative, but the player themselves aren't? My artificer player has some so called POC (EDIT: Proof Of Concept) project to prove her theories correct (Geothermal energy as alternative energy source for magic shit), but they can't come up with specifics as to what the POC is (eg a magic gun, a perpetual motion machine, etc). How can I help them? It's a bit too late to drop the POC angle.
- Give out a list of possible POCs, they pick one
- Leave it vague
- ???
I think this question asks some other questions, that might help you and the player figure out what they're building. What is the current "energy source for magic shit" that geothermal energy is an alternative to? What are the problems with the current energy source that the artificer is trying to solve? What kind of "magic shit" are they trying to do?
And then beyond that, you have the question of real world analogues. In the real world, energy sources like this aren't exactly portable. Is this magical version of a geothermal power plant portable somehow? Or is it powering their lab back home? Have they invented a way to convert geothermal energy into a magic battery of sorts? Or is their power plant providing the energy for a spell in their lab to last much longer than it would otherwise or something?
I don't know, I could almost see approaching this like an episode of Magical Shark Tank. Your artificer is standing in front of a council of wizards, and is about to pitch her new geothermal invention. What questions would the Council of Sharks ask before they're willing to invest their astral diamonds into her startup?
Okay, so some details on the Artificer:
- She belongs in the Mad Science of Explosions n' Stuff Guild (Ravnica's Izzet guild)
- The city's basically a low-wide magical environment - plenty of magic around, just low level. Kinda magepunk. Their guild handles infrastructure, so they're a combined R&D, Energy and Public Works department for basically the Whole World.
- The pitch her player has is something to the effect of "I want to make a spaceship to go to the moon, but harness Geothermic energy for it", which is... two concepts pretty goddang distant from each other, but we managed to refine it to "a) Make geothermal energy a viable alternative energy source, since it's just there, there's a lot of it below the city, and no one's bothering to get it, b) revolutionize geothermal energy acquisition and storage, c) ????, d) fly to the moon" (Personally, I'm thinking this could become a Silicon-Valley-esque Pied Piper scenario, but no concrete plans yet to go down that route)
- Most Izzet mage-scientists have their pet project that they're working on, hoping to snag investors and/or their guild leader's eye. I've had her work on Research as her down time activity to track her progress.
- She has not put forward the second half of her project yet, and there's an Open House coming up, so she needs that Proof of Concept to showcase her ideas.
- She loves setting things on fire.
Another different question - how do you handle the progress of a player whose character is supposedly very creative, but the player themselves aren't? My artificer player has some so called POC (EDIT: Proof Of Concept) project to prove her theories correct (Geothermal energy as alternative energy source for magic shit), but they can't come up with specifics as to what the POC is (eg a magic gun, a perpetual motion machine, etc). How can I help them? It's a bit too late to drop the POC angle.
- Give out a list of possible POCs, they pick one
- Leave it vague
- ???
I think this question asks some other questions, that might help you and the player figure out what they're building. What is the current "energy source for magic shit" that geothermal energy is an alternative to? What are the problems with the current energy source that the artificer is trying to solve? What kind of "magic shit" are they trying to do?
And then beyond that, you have the question of real world analogues. In the real world, energy sources like this aren't exactly portable. Is this magical version of a geothermal power plant portable somehow? Or is it powering their lab back home? Have they invented a way to convert geothermal energy into a magic battery of sorts? Or is their power plant providing the energy for a spell in their lab to last much longer than it would otherwise or something?
I don't know, I could almost see approaching this like an episode of Magical Shark Tank. Your artificer is standing in front of a council of wizards, and is about to pitch her new geothermal invention. What questions would the Council of Sharks ask before they're willing to invest their astral diamonds into her startup?
Okay, so some details on the Artificer:
- She belongs in the Mad Science of Explosions n' Stuff Guild (Ravnica's Izzet guild)
- The city's basically a low-wide magical environment - plenty of magic around, just low level. Kinda magepunk. Their guild handles infrastructure, so they're a combined R&D, Energy and Public Works department for basically the Whole World.
- The pitch her player has is something to the effect of "I want to make a spaceship to go to the moon, but harness Geothermic energy for it", which is... two concepts pretty goddang distant from each other, but we managed to refine it to "a) Make geothermal energy a viable alternative energy source, since it's just there, there's a lot of it below the city, and no one's bothering to get it, b) revolutionize geothermal energy acquisition and storage, c) ????, d) fly to the moon" (Personally, I'm thinking this could become a Silicon-Valley-esque Pied Piper scenario, but no concrete plans yet to go down that route)
- Most Izzet mage-scientists have their pet project that they're working on, hoping to snag investors and/or their guild leader's eye. I've had her work on Research as her down time activity to track her progress.
- She has not put forward the second half of her project yet, and there's an Open House coming up, so she needs that Proof of Concept to showcase her ideas.
- She loves setting things on fire.
My first thought reading that is: she's developing a revolutionary method of high-density energy storage, and a method for reliably and quickly filling that storage from geothermal energy rather than just pumping it full of regular arcane magic. Of course her dream is to use those lava-batteries to launch a rocket to the moon, so her proof-of-concept is basically just a big missile. That missile is a step toward her ultimate goal, but it's also a juicy hook for other guilds and/or guild members wanting to steal her work and turn it into a weapon.
Another different question - how do you handle the progress of a player whose character is supposedly very creative, but the player themselves aren't? My artificer player has some so called POC (EDIT: Proof Of Concept) project to prove her theories correct (Geothermal energy as alternative energy source for magic shit), but they can't come up with specifics as to what the POC is (eg a magic gun, a perpetual motion machine, etc). How can I help them? It's a bit too late to drop the POC angle.
- Give out a list of possible POCs, they pick one
- Leave it vague
- ???
I think this question asks some other questions, that might help you and the player figure out what they're building. What is the current "energy source for magic shit" that geothermal energy is an alternative to? What are the problems with the current energy source that the artificer is trying to solve? What kind of "magic shit" are they trying to do?
And then beyond that, you have the question of real world analogues. In the real world, energy sources like this aren't exactly portable. Is this magical version of a geothermal power plant portable somehow? Or is it powering their lab back home? Have they invented a way to convert geothermal energy into a magic battery of sorts? Or is their power plant providing the energy for a spell in their lab to last much longer than it would otherwise or something?
I don't know, I could almost see approaching this like an episode of Magical Shark Tank. Your artificer is standing in front of a council of wizards, and is about to pitch her new geothermal invention. What questions would the Council of Sharks ask before they're willing to invest their astral diamonds into her startup?
Okay, so some details on the Artificer:
- She belongs in the Mad Science of Explosions n' Stuff Guild (Ravnica's Izzet guild)
- The city's basically a low-wide magical environment - plenty of magic around, just low level. Kinda magepunk. Their guild handles infrastructure, so they're a combined R&D, Energy and Public Works department for basically the Whole World.
- The pitch her player has is something to the effect of "I want to make a spaceship to go to the moon, but harness Geothermic energy for it", which is... two concepts pretty goddang distant from each other, but we managed to refine it to "a) Make geothermal energy a viable alternative energy source, since it's just there, there's a lot of it below the city, and no one's bothering to get it, b) revolutionize geothermal energy acquisition and storage, c) ????, d) fly to the moon" (Personally, I'm thinking this could become a Silicon-Valley-esque Pied Piper scenario, but no concrete plans yet to go down that route)
- Most Izzet mage-scientists have their pet project that they're working on, hoping to snag investors and/or their guild leader's eye. I've had her work on Research as her down time activity to track her progress.
- She has not put forward the second half of her project yet, and there's an Open House coming up, so she needs that Proof of Concept to showcase her ideas.
- She loves setting things on fire.
My first thought reading that is: she's developing a revolutionary method of high-density energy storage, and a method for reliably and quickly filling that storage from geothermal energy rather than just pumping it full of regular arcane magic. Of course her dream is to use those lava-batteries to launch a rocket to the moon, so her proof-of-concept is basically just a big missile. That missile is a step toward her ultimate goal, but it's also a juicy hook for other guilds and/or guild members wanting to steal her work and turn it into a weapon.
Gotta be careful though, she might piss off the union of lightning wranglers and sheppards (who guide and direct powerful thunderstorms that currently supply the arcane energy for powerful workings). They are a pretty powerful union to cross and might come after her disruptive technology.
OK so here is how you get to the moon with geothermal energy.
1 you get a bunch of decanters of endless water.
2 you get a volcano/lava flow/hot place
3 cap the hot place and pressurize it. Make a nozzle at the end of the hot place.
4 place a teleportation circle at the end of the nozzle
5 place the other end of the teleportation circle on the back end of your spaceship.
6 feed water into the volcano with the decanters
You now have a steam rocket engine with a reaction mass that doesn’t need to be stored on your rocket. Which makes it hella easy to go anywhere in space. Or get to space for that matter
Technically everything except the decanter is pointless. Since the decanter has a fixed flow rate you can arbitrarily increase the velocity and therefore energy by affixing a strong enough and small enough nozzle and since the water comes from a place where we don’t have to store any reaction mass we break the rocket equation and can accelerate (with enough time) to the speed of light.
But no one really needs to know that in the campaign. Plus the expansion of the reaction mass maybe provides engineering advantages. You might be able to utilize spells like fire shield in order to provide an effective pressure barrier because steam does heat damage while water does bludgeoning. And it’s much easier to modify fire shield than stoneskin (seriously look at the cost of stone skin!) in order to fortify the barrier and provide a strong enough nozzle. The more complicated working allows for much easier thrust modulation and faster acceleration because net ship mass can be offloaded to the ground. Additionally modifying the rockets thrust vector is much easier when you don’t have a bunch of decanters to move and there are no differing forces on the structure. It would be far too inefficient to heat the water into steam with magic, it would take thousands of mages energy to do so. Plus you don’t even have to worry much about creature comforts. You use a second teleportation circle to get from the ship to sleeping quarters etc.
Downsides. At least 1 year of wait time as you build the spaceship (IE make a bunch of permanent teleportation circles.) plus other complications can arise (teleportation circles only transport creatures! Permanent circles can’t be permanently linked! Gate is far harder and must go to a different plane of existence!
If you want a complication that is easier to solve. This fails because the injection does not impart force onto the teleportation circle itself. So a duct must be installed so that the water impacts the ductwork to provide the necessary force. Kind of like how a fan blowing on a sail indeed provides forward thrust)
Frankly teleportation circles and decanters of endless water break a lot of things. One reason it’s easy for wizards to live in crazy remote towers is because you can have indoor plumbing without the need to connect to any mains or have a well. Just feed a decanter in at the top and teleport the waste right to a processing plant at the bottom.
E.G One of my Eberron games had the main quest giver use a mortar to launch a teleportation circle to the moon so that the players could go install a mirror there with their mecha (which Mrs Frizzle had made out of modified apparatus of kwalesh). And when they got there someone was already living on the moon.
Edit: other possible complications. Teleportation circles work because they’re fixed points. But as soon as you get to space you realize that there is no such thing as a fixed point. Terra is orbiting the sun just as much as the moon is orbiting terra! With this knowledge acquired all teleportation circles break as the magic that underpins their working relied on the collective understanding that points were fixed. They no longer function.
Frankly it’s far easier to just teleport to the moon. It’s on the same plane of existence and you can get very familiar with even a moderately powerful telescope. (And it’s not like a sufficiently powerful wizard to teleport could not build one)
Edit: and if you’re wondering how you would breathe up there the answer is that you would water breathe and have a helmet full of water. (If you needed fresh water as you depleted the oxygen then I might direct you to the aforementioned decanter)
Edit: and if you are wondering how you cast your verbal spells while underwater i point you at metamagic adept for subtle spell. Wherein you will have enough metamagic points to subtle teleport and teleportation circle to return.
And if you’re wondering who you should never let play a wizard in your campaign it’s me. Never let me play a wizard. Muhahahahahahahaha
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Thanks everyone, looks like I have something I can put forward to my resident firestarter.
@Goumindong That's a lot of info that I can file away in case someone in my group decides to probe around the minutiae, thanks, though I feel that the artificer's player will be content with "Rockets go brrr"
the DM is playing the weird music-animated time frozen person thing as Janet from The Good Place
he has given her the ability to create minor items and pull them from nowhere while cheerfully saying "Here you go!" and reminding us how long until she dies
I get her to stop, the faithful think I've just accomplished a miracle, my character realizes this isn't what I intended, I've now created sapient life and it's going to die in one hour unless I keep spending third level spell slots to keep it alive (which buys us 3 hours), the high priest lady is on her knees weeping, the party paladin is FUMING but he doesn't want to destroy the hope I've created in these people by revealing that it didn't work at all
Doesn't this quickly fall apart once people realize you're animating her like a puppet? It's animated object with an intelligence of 4, not sapient life. I can appreciate the DM letting you be creative with your character, but you don't think this feels little outside the bounds of a 6th level class ability?
That's without even questioning why your DM would let you use that on a living creature, when it specifically says, "item". Or now do all magic spells that list the target as an item apply to living creatures?
I get her to stop, the faithful think I've just accomplished a miracle, my character realizes this isn't what I intended, I've now created sapient life and it's going to die in one hour unless I keep spending third level spell slots to keep it alive (which buys us 3 hours), the high priest lady is on her knees weeping, the party paladin is FUMING but he doesn't want to destroy the hope I've created in these people by revealing that it didn't work at all
Doesn't this quickly fall apart once people realize you're animating her like a puppet? It's animated object with an intelligence of 4, not sapient life. I can appreciate the DM letting you be creative with your character, but you don't think this feels little outside the bounds of a 6th level class ability?
That's without even questioning why your DM would let you use that on a living creature, when it specifically says, "item". Or now do all magic spells that list the target as an item apply to living creatures?
I'm using a circlet of intellect, so 19 int
as a consequence the DM has utterly removed my control over my animated item for the time being (she's very keen on helping us save the city though)
until we solve this conundrum I've effectively lost my class feature but I'm okay with it, and the DM has confided out of game he's thrilled to have a mcguffin to drag us in the direction he wants us to go because it's less railroady than the module as written - the session ended before we found a solution but it was hinted that a soul coin might provide the kind of power to give it real life, in another form because this situation isn't ideal. None of our characters know what a soul coin is. I'm expecting a devil deal in our future
The artificer/rogue suggested building a robot body for the sentience whos name is just a musical note so if I was our DM, I'd tie this into his upcoming Iron Defender class feature he'll get next level
edit: To your second question, it's only because the time-frozen person is actually dead, just frozen at the moment of death. We DO need to figure out how to undo that at some point and bring the actual person back to life because according to the flying elephant she knows where the sword of Zariel is, which we can use to free the city from hell.
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when they killed Arrigal in front of her I was so happy because she birded away so I could literally use her to take the party where I wanted them to go - it's not a railroad if the party is using Locate Animals or Plants to pursue a pissed off vistana
(I'm using the Tasha's/Dragons of Icespire Peak Sidekicks statblocks so she isn't a useless fated ally, at this point she's a level 4 spellcaster with the divination Portent feature bolted on)
Anyway, it's been a couple of sessions. We had a fortune telling that, based on the detail, the cards, and the fact that the cards are shown on the module's cover, is very important. Last session we headed to Vallaki but took a short detour.
Long story short, the party is split into 4 groups. Bard is on the top floor by himself with the old lady, the Monk and Cleric on the second floor with the daughters, the Paladin on the bottom floor alone, and my Warlock and the Rogue outside. That's when the Bard decides to try and cast Sleep.
Predictably, things fell apart pretty quickly. We only got a single round of combat, but one attack from one of the daughters managed to nesrly 1 shot the Monk, and the Cleric is at half HP from a Magic Missile from the other. Meanwhile my Warlock has only heard some crashing noises and is assuming these uncouth hicks he's been traveling with have imposed on the old woman and broken something, and is in no hurry to reenter. Considering how little time he's known them, it's tempting to just have him dip out and leave them to die.
At the end of the session, we're all calling out the Bard for being too dumb to live. The Monk/Cleric were desperately calling for the Bard to give up and leave while they could but didn't want to just leave without him. I have a feeling he might be rolling a new character next session. At least if/when we come back to the mill, my Warlock can be someone completely different. I'm thinking I might recommend the group flee, then return alone later disguised as the Bard's father and offer to pay a ransom if he's still alive.
Personally I don't think the bard is being that much of an idiot, given the information available, obviously metagaming the nature of the old women sleep won't work but it's a fair assessment for a baby adventurer that sleep will pretty much always work on old women 100% of the time
My cards put both of the good items inside Stradh's cattle, and the infodump at Argynvostholst.
I rigged the reading for my players except for the chosen ally (since I was going to make the chosen ally roughly the same level of usefulness regardless, they got Arabelle, who is fairly weak but Strahd would never hurt a Vistani that didnt not first attack him, and she never will - so she's basically a minor support wizard with plot armor) so I could have the chosen items be scattered around
for example the sword is in the hands of my Erinyes burgomaster of Tuefeldorf, a creature of Law, Strahd trusted her to hold it for him knowing that she is physically incapable of breaking her promise to never give the sword to enemies of Barovia (which, you've already spotted a potential non combat way of obtaining it, if you can convince her that enemy is Strahd)
Okay well keep in mind I did say I have avoided any spoilers on this module so please continue to be at least this vague or vaguer. You have already clued me in that the sword is not a metaphor and is very powerful.
As to the Bard's stupidity, it was more about starting an engagement when the party is a) completely unaware he's doing it and b) spread into 4 separate subgroups of various general awareness of the situation at all.
When the other two downstairs figured out what the ladies were up to, they repeatedly called up to the Bard and asked him to leave with them, but he ignored them to go further upstairs. And of course, nobody could come up with a good way to clue in the outdoors half of the party without leaving the Bard behind.
So yeah, now we're contemplating leaving him behind.
That makes sense!
Our CoS's group experience was maybe a little similar but had a better outcome. We knew, via the tarot reading, that something of value was in the old mill, but not exactly what (we got something other than what your party got). So we were a bit more careful. Our party's Paladin also groked that the meat pie seller on the streets of Barovia was not what she seemed and he ran her out of town. So when our party got there, it was always going to be a throw down. Most of the party went in the front door together while the shadow monk went to the top floor and in a window, foiling the baddies surprise attack and causing a shit show. BUT he had cast silence on himself to be more sneaky and that was the only thing that saved out bacon in the ensuing scrap. I don't know what your DM had for you, but our foes were quite hampered by not being able to use verbal components for thier spellcasting. If it wasn't for that Silence spell? Our 4th level party would have been tomorrows lunch.
we're 25 sessions in and the rogue keeps heading back to the windmill for more
he hands them out to npcs
he knows what's in them, he hasnt told anyone
(Can a party mate save someone who is being smothered by the rug by grappling the rug itself? What I did was just have them succeed on a contested grapple to give the victim advantage on escaping)
Animate Dead lets you animate a zombie or skeleton (which should be obvious, but hey - stuff like 'Chill Touch' exists in this school), but it also lets you control them.
Should a necromancer encounter some 'wild' skeletons or zombies that have been released from the command of an Animate Dead spell, then they can lay claim to them.
Create Undead works the same way with the higher level stuff.
It's actually easier to steal skeletons and zombies than it is to raise them. The spell raises one, but dominates four per cast.
Chill touch does quite well for stopping the regeneration on things like vampire spawn, and they're still wizards. No one ever complained about a necromancer throwing a fireball, whilst cackling behind an army of skeletons.
Necromancy Wizards however DO get Command Undead at 14th level, which lets them force any undead to make a charisma save against their spell save DC or be controlled. (Intelligent undead have advantage against this save and can repeat the save every hour to break free) A creature that makes its save is immune and you can only ever control one undead at a time like this but you have no limit to the number of times you may do this per day. And a captured unintelligent undead is yours forever
edit: there is no other option to break free so this is, functionally a save or die for any undead any CR. A lich has a +3 charisma save and well probably will have saved one of its legendary saves for this but... still
An earthquake breaks a hole in the place, and skeletons occasionally wander out, attacking villagers, and everyone completely misinterprets this as the spectator being "The boss" of the undead or whatever and hires adventurers to put an end to its evil
- Give out a list of possible POCs, they pick one
- Leave it vague
- ???
This and possibly Chill Touch seem like the only actual anti-undead spells specific to the Necromancy path though. In some past editions it felt like there were more options within the Necromancy school to use against the Undead. There isn't really a good way to play an Abhorsen type Necromancer in 5e currently, as far as I can tell.
Homesteading requires you to constantly live there for a period of time.
Gonna have some issues with that "live" verb there.
Wouldn't a law be more likely to use "reside" or "occupy"?
I think either of your listed options could work perfectly fine depending on how far you intend to develop the plans. If it never has to be built then it can just be an amazing cool idea without needing to be defined. My thought would be talk with the player and see how she feels about it. It could be she would very much welcome a helping hand in defining what it is after a bit of back and forth. She might even be happier with something less abstract
Magic being an element really gives a lot of room to work with on this. I had a similar concept I was spinning out until I realized my endgame was having steam power plants that were produced more power than a nuclear power plant in the real world. It turns out making mundane objects with magical material really fucks with the physics.
Skeletons and zombies don't have a high enough Int to argue that case. Vampires and lichs are powerful enough they don't need to.
For example, I mentioned before we found a time locked woman in a dungeon, apparently dead but she's been there for hundreds of years and looks alive. Devils were about so I stuffed her in my bag of holding.
Well cut to last session, I obtained a circlet of intellect through a theft on a vampire, and had an idea.
I assembled the party, none of them knowing what I'd been up to (in this...floating city in hell that's slowly being torn apart). I withdrew the nameless hero from my bag, who had hastily been redressed in the suit of flaming fist platemail that I found (I cleaned the gore of the original occupant off of it). I drew forth the circlet of intellect, and I announced to the paladin and the gathered Flaming Fist and faithful in this temple that I figured out how to bring the hero back to life (since she's frozen in time she can't normally be resurrected or anything), and this legendary dragon slayer would be of great aid to us shortly
I used animating performance on the body, and stuck a circlet of intellect on her. The DM looked at the statblock for animated item, and the reference art, and decided that an animated human-shaped object would act like a human and that the item doesn't say it can't speak. So the woman floats up to her feet and starts doing a jig and waves to everyone and says "WOW this is different I can talk! I can talk! I CAN SING!" and she starts singing and dancing (this isnt my first time doing this, previously I'd used the animated body as a door-stop to block some minotaurs because the DM said the body was indestructible, but no talking that time, just dancing - but the whole party didnt know about that)
I get her to stop, the faithful think I've just accomplished a miracle, my character realizes this isn't what I intended, I've now created sapient life and it's going to die in one hour unless I keep spending third level spell slots to keep it alive (which buys us 3 hours), the high priest lady is on her knees weeping, the party paladin is FUMING but he doesn't want to destroy the hope I've created in these people by revealing that it didn't work at all
She says her name is (at this point the DM plays a soundboard clip of some chimes and a guitar string)
edit: the wizard is a chronomancer from EGTW and this hero being time frozen is clearly a quest the DM inserted for his benefit, since he has to research how to unfreeze this potential ally. There are plot hooks that suggest Tiamat is responsible for this statis, and wouldnt you know it we have a map to Tiamat. In game my character asked him if my plan would work and he said "Oh yeah totally". The DM asked "dont you want to roll arcana?" and he said "nah, but I would like to roll deception" - my bard doesnt have good insight
Ahhh the age old problem in DnD in that it’s impossible to role play someone with better mental stats than the player possesses.
Leaving it vague is totally possible but giving a list is a lot better. The problem with vague is that you cannot realize the project and so it must always be a nebulous goal. And as such you cannot utilize the plot point later. The list let’s the player complete their goal and advance their character.
I think this question asks some other questions, that might help you and the player figure out what they're building. What is the current "energy source for magic shit" that geothermal energy is an alternative to? What are the problems with the current energy source that the artificer is trying to solve? What kind of "magic shit" are they trying to do?
And then beyond that, you have the question of real world analogues. In the real world, energy sources like this aren't exactly portable. Is this magical version of a geothermal power plant portable somehow? Or is it powering their lab back home? Have they invented a way to convert geothermal energy into a magic battery of sorts? Or is their power plant providing the energy for a spell in their lab to last much longer than it would otherwise or something?
I don't know, I could almost see approaching this like an episode of Magical Shark Tank. Your artificer is standing in front of a council of wizards, and is about to pitch her new geothermal invention. What questions would the Council of Sharks ask before they're willing to invest their astral diamonds into her startup?
So, geothermal energy as a replacement for magic or as a source powering magic; what's the downside of the current way of magic that geothermal energy would fix and work your way backwards from that.
So think, no Wild Magic Surges, no counterspelling, no somatic, verbal or material (or more likely in case of material, different) components are a few ways to go with that.
Downsides, like Denada says, would be that geothermal energy is not exactly portable or easy to use, but as an energy source it would probably be stable and reliable for a long time, so use it to fuel spells that otherwise would have a wizard needing to cast them every day (or in some cases every day for a year to make them permanent) like teleportation circles, wards, private sanctum or more disturbing create undead. If you really want to go crazy with it: create food and water.
So the proof of concept can be a simple device that would be able to create a low level spell effect permanently, but it needs a geothermal power source, so the Artificer will have to travel to places to test this out, either volcanoes, geysers or travelling to other planets. (Let's say the effect is "Create Minor Illusion" that becomes permanently powered by dropping a small device in a volcano that creates a giant image of the gnomish inventor winking above the volcano).
Now the player should come up with the details on their own, but you can guide them by asking them questions about their invention, forcing them to think about what their device does and how it works. Ask questions that are character-related; did the Artificer had a spell fail in their past with consequences and is that the reason they are now looking for a more reliable method. If yes, what happened and the device they will be designing will probably be based on that specific spell as PoC.
Okay, so some details on the Artificer:
- She belongs in the Mad Science of Explosions n' Stuff Guild (Ravnica's Izzet guild)
- The city's basically a low-wide magical environment - plenty of magic around, just low level. Kinda magepunk. Their guild handles infrastructure, so they're a combined R&D, Energy and Public Works department for basically the Whole World.
- The pitch her player has is something to the effect of "I want to make a spaceship to go to the moon, but harness Geothermic energy for it", which is... two concepts pretty goddang distant from each other, but we managed to refine it to "a) Make geothermal energy a viable alternative energy source, since it's just there, there's a lot of it below the city, and no one's bothering to get it, b) revolutionize geothermal energy acquisition and storage, c) ????, d) fly to the moon" (Personally, I'm thinking this could become a Silicon-Valley-esque Pied Piper scenario, but no concrete plans yet to go down that route)
- Most Izzet mage-scientists have their pet project that they're working on, hoping to snag investors and/or their guild leader's eye. I've had her work on Research as her down time activity to track her progress.
- She has not put forward the second half of her project yet, and there's an Open House coming up, so she needs that Proof of Concept to showcase her ideas.
- She loves setting things on fire.
My first thought reading that is: she's developing a revolutionary method of high-density energy storage, and a method for reliably and quickly filling that storage from geothermal energy rather than just pumping it full of regular arcane magic. Of course her dream is to use those lava-batteries to launch a rocket to the moon, so her proof-of-concept is basically just a big missile. That missile is a step toward her ultimate goal, but it's also a juicy hook for other guilds and/or guild members wanting to steal her work and turn it into a weapon.
Gotta be careful though, she might piss off the union of lightning wranglers and sheppards (who guide and direct powerful thunderstorms that currently supply the arcane energy for powerful workings). They are a pretty powerful union to cross and might come after her disruptive technology.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
@override367 wow, what a great line
1 you get a bunch of decanters of endless water.
2 you get a volcano/lava flow/hot place
3 cap the hot place and pressurize it. Make a nozzle at the end of the hot place.
4 place a teleportation circle at the end of the nozzle
5 place the other end of the teleportation circle on the back end of your spaceship.
6 feed water into the volcano with the decanters
You now have a steam rocket engine with a reaction mass that doesn’t need to be stored on your rocket. Which makes it hella easy to go anywhere in space. Or get to space for that matter
Technically everything except the decanter is pointless. Since the decanter has a fixed flow rate you can arbitrarily increase the velocity and therefore energy by affixing a strong enough and small enough nozzle and since the water comes from a place where we don’t have to store any reaction mass we break the rocket equation and can accelerate (with enough time) to the speed of light.
But no one really needs to know that in the campaign. Plus the expansion of the reaction mass maybe provides engineering advantages. You might be able to utilize spells like fire shield in order to provide an effective pressure barrier because steam does heat damage while water does bludgeoning. And it’s much easier to modify fire shield than stoneskin (seriously look at the cost of stone skin!) in order to fortify the barrier and provide a strong enough nozzle. The more complicated working allows for much easier thrust modulation and faster acceleration because net ship mass can be offloaded to the ground. Additionally modifying the rockets thrust vector is much easier when you don’t have a bunch of decanters to move and there are no differing forces on the structure. It would be far too inefficient to heat the water into steam with magic, it would take thousands of mages energy to do so. Plus you don’t even have to worry much about creature comforts. You use a second teleportation circle to get from the ship to sleeping quarters etc.
Downsides. At least 1 year of wait time as you build the spaceship (IE make a bunch of permanent teleportation circles.) plus other complications can arise (teleportation circles only transport creatures! Permanent circles can’t be permanently linked! Gate is far harder and must go to a different plane of existence!
If you want a complication that is easier to solve. This fails because the injection does not impart force onto the teleportation circle itself. So a duct must be installed so that the water impacts the ductwork to provide the necessary force. Kind of like how a fan blowing on a sail indeed provides forward thrust)
Frankly teleportation circles and decanters of endless water break a lot of things. One reason it’s easy for wizards to live in crazy remote towers is because you can have indoor plumbing without the need to connect to any mains or have a well. Just feed a decanter in at the top and teleport the waste right to a processing plant at the bottom.
E.G One of my Eberron games had the main quest giver use a mortar to launch a teleportation circle to the moon so that the players could go install a mirror there with their mecha (which Mrs Frizzle had made out of modified apparatus of kwalesh). And when they got there someone was already living on the moon.
Edit: other possible complications. Teleportation circles work because they’re fixed points. But as soon as you get to space you realize that there is no such thing as a fixed point. Terra is orbiting the sun just as much as the moon is orbiting terra! With this knowledge acquired all teleportation circles break as the magic that underpins their working relied on the collective understanding that points were fixed. They no longer function.
Edit: and if you’re wondering how you would breathe up there the answer is that you would water breathe and have a helmet full of water. (If you needed fresh water as you depleted the oxygen then I might direct you to the aforementioned decanter)
Edit: and if you are wondering how you cast your verbal spells while underwater i point you at metamagic adept for subtle spell. Wherein you will have enough metamagic points to subtle teleport and teleportation circle to return.
And if you’re wondering who you should never let play a wizard in your campaign it’s me. Never let me play a wizard. Muhahahahahahahaha
@Goumindong That's a lot of info that I can file away in case someone in my group decides to probe around the minutiae, thanks, though I feel that the artificer's player will be content with "Rockets go brrr"
he has given her the ability to create minor items and pull them from nowhere while cheerfully saying "Here you go!" and reminding us how long until she dies
this is the best DM decision
Doesn't this quickly fall apart once people realize you're animating her like a puppet? It's animated object with an intelligence of 4, not sapient life. I can appreciate the DM letting you be creative with your character, but you don't think this feels little outside the bounds of a 6th level class ability?
That's without even questioning why your DM would let you use that on a living creature, when it specifically says, "item". Or now do all magic spells that list the target as an item apply to living creatures?
I'm using a circlet of intellect, so 19 int
as a consequence the DM has utterly removed my control over my animated item for the time being (she's very keen on helping us save the city though)
until we solve this conundrum I've effectively lost my class feature but I'm okay with it, and the DM has confided out of game he's thrilled to have a mcguffin to drag us in the direction he wants us to go because it's less railroady than the module as written - the session ended before we found a solution but it was hinted that a soul coin might provide the kind of power to give it real life, in another form because this situation isn't ideal. None of our characters know what a soul coin is. I'm expecting a devil deal in our future
The artificer/rogue suggested building a robot body for the sentience whos name is just a musical note so if I was our DM, I'd tie this into his upcoming Iron Defender class feature he'll get next level
edit: To your second question, it's only because the time-frozen person is actually dead, just frozen at the moment of death. We DO need to figure out how to undo that at some point and bring the actual person back to life because according to the flying elephant she knows where the sword of Zariel is, which we can use to free the city from hell.
edit2: for reference