A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
-
- Tags
- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Good point. Changing my vote to just talk to the mage.
- Location
- Germany
...
You can have the Skum press against the wall until they can climb over the corpses of their own buddies. That's the thing with nigh mindless chaff you don't care about.
Or. You know. Bring a ladder. Like a medieval army would.
Or. Go around the wall and sack the countryside in terror attacks.
We want to protect cities and delay the enemies chaff from entering, by your own description they will do that job. Even if it took tham as little as an hour to take the wall/fortifications it would give use enough time to react and thin out the chaff.
- Location
- Germany
They will not. They are a minor inconvenience at best, in exchange for massive negative effects on the cities development.
You only need trivial effort to breach walls in seconds in DnD and it won't take a 18th level mage to do it either.
You are much better served with an early warning system that alerts you 10 minutes before the attack then with a wall that takes 10 seconds to breach with Explosive Packs.
- Location
- Chicago
[X] Ask to speak to the Axiomite mage Aikaterine
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
This month we're going to build a large magitech radar system which can track all flying ships and creatures, as well as any ship below or on the water, out to a significant distance away from Sorcerer's Deep. The spells used don't work for swimming creatures, but it's better than nothing.
I can't remember the exact details, such as price or range, but it should be something we can eventually install in all important cities.
- Location
- Germany
That sounds useful.
- Location
- France
I'm sorry, but no.
- What "massive negative effect on the city's development"? We can tear it down in a day or two when we need to expand further, and rebuild it further out. I'm not suggesting some massive arcane fortification here, just something with a lot of Hardness.
- If they climb the wall with ladders or corpses, then they're heavily slowed and can't all hit us at once. Objective reached.
- If they breach a wall and attack through the breach, that's still better than having to fight attacks that can come from all sides. And they'll have spent a high-level spell slot or a huge pile of explosives to make a big enough breach (and possibly even spent time to get the breach done, if they're not using spell slots). Also cost-effective. Honestly the worst cost is losing the soldiers who were on top of that stretch of wall.
- There's no reason not to do this and an early warning system. Not only can the House of Mirrors divine attacks and large troop movements, but we're already starting to build detection systems and will keep doing so in the future.
When I say "mundane fortifications" I'm thinking of things like a wall (with an open area in front and behind it) upon which we can keep some troops and lookouts. Not a wall that we'd stake our whole defense on - most of our troops should stay as mobile as possible, within a base (perhaps in the city itself) and ready to deploy from there.
Basically the wall is there to create some depth to defend from, because teleporting armies of Skum is impractical.
tl;dr : a big wall is super cheap and is nice to have, so why not build one?
- Location
- florida
Because it DOES still cost us resources. It takes people to man it, it takes people to build it, and it will massively disrupt trade.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Found the initial magitech radar write-up.
It already has DP approval.
Okay, here's what I'm thinking about for a Magical Traffic Control System;
We start with Detect Ship. It's a 3rd level spell that reaches one mile per caster level by default, and while that is a large area, it's not really suitable for our purposes at minimum caster level. Instead, we Enlarge it and rather than use the minimum 7th caster level for the resulting 4th level spell, we instead enchant it at 10th caster level. That raises the radius to 10 miles from the point of origin, which is much more reasonable and falls within the abilities of our hired Master Enchanters (who are all 10th level). A constant 4th level spell effect at 10th caster level will cost us 6,000 IM after taking into account the discount for the base effect having a duration 24 hours and the +50% tax for adding an additional effect to an already existing item.
Then we tie a basic Track Ship effect in with the Detect Ship function. This one allows us to catalog our ships, along with all ships which make port in Sorcerer's Deep, making note of their names, captains, and other relevant information. We can also assign each of them an Imperial Registration Number for ease of reference. Adding this as a constant effect to the system will cost 1,800 IM after taking into account the +50% tax for adding an additional effect to an already existing item. A separate Track Ship system tied to a large nautical chart (or a globe after we get a good orbital view of Planetos) would be used to track ships that move beyond the 20 mile Detect Ship effect.
And tying it all together would be a Mirage Arcana spell at 10th caster level. The Mirage Arcana effect would generate a massive holographic illusion within the tracking chamber using the spell's ten 20-foot cubes to show a scaled down image of Sorcerer's Deep and the surrounding space for a radius of 10 miles, with every ship under the water, floating atop it, or flying overhead represented by a tiny illusory duplicate. This would cost 10,000 IM.
A central operator would rest in a command and control cradle which would magically feed the output from the Detect Ship spell into their mind, allowing them to be simultaneously aware of all ships operating within range. The cradle would grant the operator a +10 Competence bonus to Profession (Sailor) skill checks in order to maximize the effectiveness of the Detect Ship spell (at a cost of 1,000 IM). The operator would be able to mentally manipulate the Mirage Arcana illusion to zoom in one specific areas, such as the port facilities of Sorcerer's Deep, in order to better view all of the ships docked there. A flock of Calligraphy Wyrms and Imperial assistants could help to catalog the information, updating our records and taking some of the load off the central operator.
The total cost for this system would be 18,800 IM.
It wouldn't be able to track troop movements or ground traffic, but we could probably upgrade it with relative ease to use something like specially placed Dragoneye Runes to track individual fliers (Dragons, Erinyes, Heralds, etc).
We start with Detect Ship. It's a 3rd level spell that reaches one mile per caster level by default, and while that is a large area, it's not really suitable for our purposes at minimum caster level. Instead, we Enlarge it and rather than use the minimum 7th caster level for the resulting 4th level spell, we instead enchant it at 10th caster level. That raises the radius to 10 miles from the point of origin, which is much more reasonable and falls within the abilities of our hired Master Enchanters (who are all 10th level). A constant 4th level spell effect at 10th caster level will cost us 6,000 IM after taking into account the discount for the base effect having a duration 24 hours and the +50% tax for adding an additional effect to an already existing item.
Then we tie a basic Track Ship effect in with the Detect Ship function. This one allows us to catalog our ships, along with all ships which make port in Sorcerer's Deep, making note of their names, captains, and other relevant information. We can also assign each of them an Imperial Registration Number for ease of reference. Adding this as a constant effect to the system will cost 1,800 IM after taking into account the +50% tax for adding an additional effect to an already existing item. A separate Track Ship system tied to a large nautical chart (or a globe after we get a good orbital view of Planetos) would be used to track ships that move beyond the 20 mile Detect Ship effect.
And tying it all together would be a Mirage Arcana spell at 10th caster level. The Mirage Arcana effect would generate a massive holographic illusion within the tracking chamber using the spell's ten 20-foot cubes to show a scaled down image of Sorcerer's Deep and the surrounding space for a radius of 10 miles, with every ship under the water, floating atop it, or flying overhead represented by a tiny illusory duplicate. This would cost 10,000 IM.
A central operator would rest in a command and control cradle which would magically feed the output from the Detect Ship spell into their mind, allowing them to be simultaneously aware of all ships operating within range. The cradle would grant the operator a +10 Competence bonus to Profession (Sailor) skill checks in order to maximize the effectiveness of the Detect Ship spell (at a cost of 1,000 IM). The operator would be able to mentally manipulate the Mirage Arcana illusion to zoom in one specific areas, such as the port facilities of Sorcerer's Deep, in order to better view all of the ships docked there. A flock of Calligraphy Wyrms and Imperial assistants could help to catalog the information, updating our records and taking some of the load off the central operator.
The total cost for this system would be 18,800 IM.
It wouldn't be able to track troop movements or ground traffic, but we could probably upgrade it with relative ease to use something like specially placed Dragoneye Runes to track individual fliers (Dragons, Erinyes, Heralds, etc).
- Location
- Germany
@TalonofAnathrax, I use a group of Mindblanked creatures to hurl Wildfyre into the city, targeting the gates first to ensure no one can escape. Your wall now helped kill everyone within.
Your turn.
The corollary here is that you are making the place more vulnerable instead of less. You are bottling up population in a prison (massively hampering transport and thus economic development for free as a side-effect) and incentice stronger attacks or attacks on a wider range of targets. These are bad things.
A good Legion garrison can keep Scum away on it's own, but it can't do shite against artillery, distributed attacks against the countryside or terror tactics.
All for delaying a bunch of Scum for a moment.
Your turn.
The corollary here is that you are making the place more vulnerable instead of less. You are bottling up population in a prison (massively hampering transport and thus economic development for free as a side-effect) and incentice stronger attacks or attacks on a wider range of targets. These are bad things.
A good Legion garrison can keep Scum away on it's own, but it can't do shite against artillery, distributed attacks against the countryside or terror tactics.
All for delaying a bunch of Scum for a moment.
- Location
- United States
How many pieces of the sundered Planes do the Efreeti even have?
They had Bloom the Brijidine randomly locked away in a prison.
They had Zathir/Jazirian on his way to be devoured by the Grand Sultan.
They had the Hadhayosh fused to one of their ships.
And now they were the ones that first held the Anvil???
- Location
- France
Don't be jealous. Paradoxically, this makes looting easier because it means we can just grab their stuff instead of having to buy it from our allies or something
- Location
- United States
I'm not jealous, I'm incredulous. You'd think the devils would have gotten to this first.Don't be jealous. Paradoxically, this makes looting easier because it means we can just grab their stuff instead of having to buy it from our allies or something
- Location
- France
This is why we have rapid-reaction forces though. They'll turn up, throw a chain dispel on the wildfire, and our normal minions will put it all out.
Look, we have fewer numbers than almost all our enemies. Walls are our friend. Seriously, without walls the Deep Ones can simply launch huge Skum attacks at all our cities at once while their PCs and big monsters fight our PCs and big monsters. We'll defend major cities and whatnot, but they'll just drown everything else in bodies. Meanwhile just setting up a wall makes such an assault far more costly and difficult for them.
Basically a wall isn't an amazing defense, but it's cheap and it's very good in the "mundane warfare" minigame. Of course the "mundane warfare" minigame will hopefully not matter much, because we want to play "magical strike team warfare" like everyone else. But if we can't play that game in a particular situation, having good mundane warfare tricks is also valuable - especially when they're so cheap!
- Location
- Germany
Just for clarities sake. The Illithid have one good reason to target cities and one good reason against. The advantage would be to pressure Viserys to capitulate by wholesale slaughter of civilians. The argument against is that they would be killing the very cattle they want.
Proactively defending civilians emphasizes that targeting them would be helpful to force a capitulation. It would incentivise to use better or more resources to attack civilians. It would provoke attacks that a local garrison could do nothing against, unless we turn the entire city into an enclosed bunker.
Proactively defending civilians emphasizes that targeting them would be helpful to force a capitulation. It would incentivise to use better or more resources to attack civilians. It would provoke attacks that a local garrison could do nothing against, unless we turn the entire city into an enclosed bunker.
- Location
- florida
Thats who theyve been trading with.
Would making the populace more dangerous and less cattle like serve as a deterent?
...does better education, economic opportunity, and law enforcement make them easier to prey on or harder to prey on?
Cause I kind of only just now realized keeping people out of cults and away from monsters mouths is part of national security.
- Location
- Germany
I repeat. A Legion stationed in a city can deal with Skum just fine. They can't deal with a lot of other stuff.
You are over focusing on a threat scenario that isn't.
Edit: Also, if you assume that the wall helps when the reaction force is busy, then where do you get those dispels from?
You are describing the Illithid attacking military installations in force and meanwhile burning down cities. Which would be bad.
Last edited: