A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
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- 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
They do indeed and you will have the option for setting up such in the long term, but those are infrastructure and the problem is becoming critical now.
- Location
- Israel
Too little water? Thirty gallons every six seconds, that's 1,728,000 liters a day. Given that humans don't really need more than 2 liters a day, your argument is not convincing.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
It's all well and good to try to change the system, y'all, but you are both completely contradicting the rules of magic which we have been using for years now.
Using D&D magic, you can specifically create matter from nothing, and that is exactly what Flashflood does. It creates 748,100 gallons of water, it doesn't Teleport it from elsewhere or transform something else into water, both of which are effects other spells make use of.
If it's not enough water to make a difference, that's one thing, but please don't reimagine the rules on the fly.
Are we talking about the bare minimum needed to keep someone alive here or what you would actually need to function as a member of a pre-industrial city with among other things. There are baths and other hygene to consider, there is a large number of livestock that people are keeping for food, there is the waste from evaporation etc...
These are not things I want to calculate to the liter so they get abstracted into an action to solve the problem. You will get such an infrastructure action next turn. That is not the problem you can do it, you just cannot do it with a snap of your fingers, if you could it breaks the setting
*sigh*
Sorry if this comes out as frustrated, I am just tired of having versions of this conversation over and over again. D&D was not designed for what it is being used for here. In order to have a game that is worth playing on this scale there have to be limits on things that random murder hobo campaigns do not need limits on.
Functionally a spell that opens a small a portal to the plane of water and filters out the salt to make a drentch cantrip is identical to 'making water' just as opening a small portal to the plane of fire to take some fire to make fireball is. Indeed there are some source books that use that explanation for firebball.
That said I am willing to compromise on 'matter creation is very magic intensive and cannot be used on a mass scale' if necessary. What matters is that you guys cannot snap your fingers and solve big problems like an aquifer that has been failing for millennia in an instant. That would trivialize everything.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
[] Let things stand until the integration next month, you can handle it once the city is officially in your hands
-[] In the interest of garnering good will with the populace and easing the burden on the city's depleted aquifer, Viserys, accompanied by Lya, Dany, Richard, Rina, and Maelor, along with a team of Imperial engineers equipped with a set of Titan's Tools, will travel to Qarth and coordinate with the Undying and relevant notables to create several large reservoirs of fresh water using careful casting of the Flashflood spell and other support magics.
--[] Between them, Viserys, Lya, Dany, and Rina could easily cast two dozen or more Flash flood spells per day without dangerously depleting their spell slots or Mythic power. If they stay for three days, they could cast the spell 72 times, providing the city with 53,863,200 gallons of water. This will hopefully help to ride the city over until more dedicated infrastructure facilities can be constructed following the integration.
-[] In the interest of garnering good will with the populace and easing the burden on the city's depleted aquifer, Viserys, accompanied by Lya, Dany, Richard, Rina, and Maelor, along with a team of Imperial engineers equipped with a set of Titan's Tools, will travel to Qarth and coordinate with the Undying and relevant notables to create several large reservoirs of fresh water using careful casting of the Flashflood spell and other support magics.
--[] Between them, Viserys, Lya, Dany, and Rina could easily cast two dozen or more Flash flood spells per day without dangerously depleting their spell slots or Mythic power. If they stay for three days, they could cast the spell 72 times, providing the city with 53,863,200 gallons of water. This will hopefully help to ride the city over until more dedicated infrastructure facilities can be constructed following the integration.
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- Location
- France
I won't lie: it's a bit jarring to suddenly learn that you can't create matter ex nihilo. You'd think we'd have noticed that in the past when we created matter ex nihilo with one of our billion Wall spells, or even with Shadow of the Doom.
And I don't see how it "breaks the setting" - we can just presume that excess matter created is being lost elsewhere (there must be unnoticed portals in places like jungles/Fey groves dropping matter from this Plane into other infinite ones, and there are probably others doing the opposite in other areas). Or was the objection "the economy of D&D makes no sense because you can create some substances infinitely"? Because there have been rather strict obstacles to infinite [valuables], it's just things like water (and to a lesser extent things like stone) that can be mass-created easily.
But whatever, there's no use in arguing with the GM. We can just spend an action on this problem.
IIRC Gate doesn't stop environmental effects from crossing it, right?
With judicious use of a freshly-created empty demiplane, we should be able to carry massive amounts of Rhoyne water from one place to another. It's just be a band-aid instead of a permanent fix, but in the short term it's nice.
EDIT: @Goldfish, this seems better in the short term than Flashflood. For one thing it doesn't fly in the face of DP's latest posts.
I wonder what the Ministry of Magic will use to solve the problem? I'm guessing that "calling in a Companion with 9ths" won't be their first recourse.
And I don't see how it "breaks the setting" - we can just presume that excess matter created is being lost elsewhere (there must be unnoticed portals in places like jungles/Fey groves dropping matter from this Plane into other infinite ones, and there are probably others doing the opposite in other areas). Or was the objection "the economy of D&D makes no sense because you can create some substances infinitely"? Because there have been rather strict obstacles to infinite [valuables], it's just things like water (and to a lesser extent things like stone) that can be mass-created easily.
But whatever, there's no use in arguing with the GM. We can just spend an action on this problem.
IIRC Gate doesn't stop environmental effects from crossing it, right?
With judicious use of a freshly-created empty demiplane, we should be able to carry massive amounts of Rhoyne water from one place to another. It's just be a band-aid instead of a permanent fix, but in the short term it's nice.
EDIT: @Goldfish, this seems better in the short term than Flashflood. For one thing it doesn't fly in the face of DP's latest posts.
I wonder what the Ministry of Magic will use to solve the problem? I'm guessing that "calling in a Companion with 9ths" won't be their first recourse.
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OK so you are going to try to pull PC off the jobs and use magic to bridge the gap. I am going to say right now this is not going to be a miracle fix, it helps of course, but also shoves some very scary mages into the faces of people who are already under the thumb of other scary mages. There is a risk that this will be taken badly, as some kind of grand conspiracy to garner the gratitude of the city. For the sake of ease of reading among those who are not so versed in spells the option could look like this
-[] Use High level magic to help bridge the gap (risks unrest)
Does this seem fair to you? I am trying to make things both more coherent and more understandable to people who do not know the system as well
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Sandstorm isn't an obscure splatbook. And Flashflood isn't something I just dredged up out of nowhere. It's been discussed off and on for years, and at one point was a potential candidate to help us green up Dorne a bit. It's a powerful 8th level spell that can't be used trivially because it's well beyond the ability of most casters.
I don't want to trivialize anything. Dedicating time from four of our most powerful spellcasters for three days isn't an insignificant investment of resoirces, IMO. If it's an issue, though, I'll remove that stuff from my plan.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
That's fine with me. Thanks, DP.
- Location
- Germany
@TalonofAnathrax, it was also jarring when the way Mindblank worked was retconned because a few people got super salty when an NPC had the temerity to abuse the system half as hard as the players do every second vote, so there is that.
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I get that, I really do not want to accuse you of anything, it is just that 'where are the PCs' is below the level of abstraction. That cannot be a valuable resource because of how the system works. Reember when we had plans that assigned each and every, that is what the system would have to look like for the actual assigning of the characters to be a relevant opportunity cost
- Location
- France
Is this about your weird interpretation of Mindblank that I'd never seen before anywhere ever?
I don't know how to easily refind and reread that passage of the quest, but I remember being very weirded out by your take on how Mindblank worked. Of course you can't just target your divination at "that mindblanked guy, but before he was mindblanked". You've got to wait until he is no longer mindblanked for your spell to work (or somehow time-travel back to before he got the mindblank and cast your divinations then, I suppose).
Mind Blank obviously has some sort of limits (and we've seen Bloodraven learn stuff about mind blanked people by targeting stuff around them which can give some clues regarding their activities) but IIRC your take on it was just weird.
Maybe I'm completely misremembering what you're talking about?
OK if I can get real with you guys for a moment I am feeling a bit overwhelmed and the system feels like it is crashing down around my head and it is the same for Azel
I am going to have to step away from my keyboard before I say something something drastic about this quest.
I am going to have to step away from my keyboard before I say something something drastic about this quest.
- Location
- Germany
By your interpretation, Mindblanking someone temporarily is pointless, as the timeframe can be divined later on when the person is no longer under Mindblank. Which flies in the face of how divination wards were repeatedly used to hide things in this quest. Nothing happening in the Shadow Tower chamber should have stayed secret after the person left it, but multiple big plans hinged on that.
But, whatever.
This is most definitely not worth all the hours I've yet again invested in this.
- Location
- France
One thing that always weirded me out was the Thought Bottle anti-divination trick used before we invaded Tyrosh... I really can't see why that worked.
- Location
- Germany
Because of the assumption that something you do while Mindblanked can not be divined, no matter if you are at some point not Mindblanked. The interpretation we had been working under all this time.
Just to spell it out in big bold letters:
As per your interpretation, the Aboleths can divine anything they want about Viserys, the Imperium and every secret you ever had or might have by going to a time when there is no active Mindblank on Viserys. The Domion of the Mind knows literally everything they could possibly know.
I hate that I have to write this and I hate that it might end up sounding accusatory and I want you guys to know that you have been my support though some really hard times so it is not my intention to make anyone feel bad about what they have posted or how they might have debated. This is not my attempt to pass judgement on anyone, except maybe myself. That said.
I feel like I am trying to patch a sinking ship, like I have made the quest too big, like I have promised too much and now I cannot deliver, like all the attempts to make things more even, more coherent, just strip away more of the magic and make the world narrower and poorer. All the meta arguments are not like we used to have them, they are not sort of friendly brainstorming, it is like we are fighting over the world, over what is fair and what works or should work or can work.
I no longer trust myself to fix this and that is a horrible thing to have to type out.
There is nothing I would love more than a time machine and chance to sit down 2016 me and sit hi down and make him do more world building, more planning, but I did not do it and now we are here arguing vitriolically about spells and metaphysics.
I feel like I am trying to patch a sinking ship, like I have made the quest too big, like I have promised too much and now I cannot deliver, like all the attempts to make things more even, more coherent, just strip away more of the magic and make the world narrower and poorer. All the meta arguments are not like we used to have them, they are not sort of friendly brainstorming, it is like we are fighting over the world, over what is fair and what works or should work or can work.
I no longer trust myself to fix this and that is a horrible thing to have to type out.
There is nothing I would love more than a time machine and chance to sit down 2016 me and sit hi down and make him do more world building, more planning, but I did not do it and now we are here arguing vitriolically about spells and metaphysics.
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I'd think it would be that if the Aboleth time travels to before we got Mind Blank, they can then divine stuff about Viserys up until that moment in time and then any moment after until he get Mind Blank.
- Location
- Germany
No. That was how it used to work, but because people didn't like an NPC exploiting the implications of this, it was changed. Now they can do just that.
I can not express in words how much of a bad idea it was to change it to the current status quo, but it was done none the less.