High-Tech Forces vs. High-Magic Forces

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think I said upthread when this thread came around the first time that the devil is in the details.

If/when the commanders of the modern forces realize their conventional forces are being wiped out, they would quickly escalate to the nastier stuff.

Assuming that rout happens, of course. Depending on where (and the nature of) the mystic forces establish their beachhead, they will have an easy/nearly impossible task ahead of them.

If the breach into our world happens on a military test range, they may face the threat of unexplored ordinance, or even the deadly residue of WMD tests. Some facilities even have shoot (to kill) on sight orders for detected intruders.

OTOH, if they pop up in the Amazon, they could have their entire army through the gate before they encounter even token resistance.

 

[pippenainteasy]

and then hope that a nuclear weapon does more than 825 points of damage.

1 pound of C4 does 4d6 damage, and is about 25% more efficient than TNT, so let's say one pound of TNT does 3d6 damage.

Typically an ICBM can field about 35-40 megatons of TNT.

That is equal to 12,000,000d6 damage.

Definitely enough for 825 I believe.

I'm not saying he's invincible, but I think a lone CR 28 LeShay would be more able to conquer the world than a lot higher CR monsters because many of it's skill set and spell-like abilities could be extremely powerful in a modern-day setting. . .and it's epic-level AC, DR, and HP mean it would be very hard to stop before it could retreat and heal up to full in only 6 rounds of Heal spells.

Alone? You mean take to the open battlefield against a modern military? A tank platoon would smash that LeShay. You quote the desert Eagle doing diddly squat, okay that's a 0.39 kg projectile going at 1380ft/s. An Abrams tank shell is a 12.7kg projectile going 5,800ft/s. Nearly 140 times more kinetic energy.

LeShay's DR?...Let's talk about the tanks...How is the LeShay going to bust through 30 inches of solid steel?

If/when the commanders of the modern forces realize their conventional forces are being wiped out, they would quickly escalate to the nastier stuff.

There is no way a modern military would lose conventionally...it's the D&D forces that would have to resort to nasty measures.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

He definitely won't be talking them out unless he has access to a radio on the right freq...

 

[wingsandsword]

1 pound of C4 does 4d6 damage, and is about 25% more efficient than TNT, so let's say one pound of TNT does 3d6 damage.

Typically an ICBM can field about 35-40 megatons of TNT.

That is equal to 12,000,000d6 damage.

Definitely enough for 825 I believe.

Where do people get this idea that weapons damage in d20 is linear?

In d20 Future, a 1MT nuclear mine (meant for taking out capital starships) does 5d100, average damage 275 HP. It will do more damage in an atmosphere because of atmospheric effects, but it would have to do more than 3x damage in atmosphere for a 1 MT weapon to have a serious chance to kill it in one hit.

That's actual official stats from a WotC book for nuclear weapon damage (and the biggest one, they had tactical nuclear missiles doing 16d8), not arbitrary back-of-envelope calculations. The only weapon in d20 Future which could have a good chance by the rules-as-written take one down in a single hit is a Zero Point Mine (basically blowing up a pocket universe to create a big-bang like explosion mean to take down heavily shielded starships), an anti-ship weapon at Progress Level 8 (think Space Opera stuff for centuries or thousands of years in the future), that does 15d100, for 825 HP on average, which is exactly it's HP, so if it does more than 10 over it could kill it because otherwise its Fast Healing will kick in.

Also, in response to that idea about automatic weapons doing so much damage because they are firing so many rounds. . .no. Check the autofire rules. Automatic weapons fire does the same amount of damage as a weapon on semi, the automatic weapon fire only turns the attack into an area-of-effect attack instead of just attacking a specific target, it does not multiply the damage.

Alone? You mean take to the open battlefield against a modern military? A tank platoon would smash that LeShay. You quote the desert Eagle doing diddly squat, okay that's a 0.39 kg projectile going at 1380ft/s. An Abrams tank shell is a 12.7kg projectile going 5,800ft/s. Nearly 140 times more kinetic energy.

LeShay's DR?...Let's talk about the tanks...How is the LeShay going to bust through 30 inches of solid steel?

Yes, alone.

Not in open warfare.

If you actually read, I was talking about the vast manipulation/control abilities of a LeShay. When you can teleport anywhere in the world flawlessly within 6 seconds, use Knock at will to open any lock, appear to look like any human, fluently speak any language, and know the local culture and traditions of any place on Earth, and can convert any person you speak to for 6 seconds from being hostile into being friendly to you, even in a fight and without a saving throw, and make them fanatically to-the-death loyal to you in another 6 seconds and tell lies so convincing only an Epic level character could possibly disbelieve anything you say no matter how absurd. . .you don't win in a straight-up fight like that, that would be a huge waste of power.

Yeah, it's strong enough that it would take significant direct military force to take it down, but that would also assume it doesn't flee instantly (or again, if a nuke would work you could find it and hit it, and would actually use a nuclear weapon, which realistically is doubtful).

Imagine using Alter Self and that +71 Disguise and Bluff skills to claim to be the return of a major religious figure, and use that Heal spell-like ability to heal the sick and ill of even
"incurable" diseases and mortal wounds. Use of Greater Teleport, Speak with Plants, Water Breathing and Detect Thoughts spell-like abilities to create other seemingly miraculous events. You could easily rally millions of true believers to its side in no time at all. Try teleporting into a church during services, healing the sick and saying it's the second coming (with a +71 to your Bluff and Disguise checks and a DC 53 constant Charm Monster gaze effect). Then imagine the public response when a government tries to mobilize the army to take this individual down.

This is the d20 system, exact calculations of projectile mass to muzzle velocity mean NOTHING to damage dice. When have D&D/d20 stats for anything been so scientifically designed? That "140 times more kinetic energy" is 10d12 per page 126 of the d20 Modern Core Rulebook (per the official d20 stats for a M1A1 Abrams tank), not 280d8, which would be 140 times that 2d8 for a Desert Eagle.

As for breaching 30 inches of armor, just as a side note, yet another power of LeShay are their innate weapons. They can summon from nowhere 2 +10 Brilliant Energy weapons of any melee weapon in the game, either a two-handed weapon, or one in either hand with perfect two weapon fighting. It can create a +10 Brilliant Energy Longspear at will in its hand. Remember, Brilliant Energy weapons ignore all nonliving matter like it isn't even there, so it would effortlessly pass through feet of armor to strike who is on the other side. They would have concealment, but unless you've got about 10 feet of armor, you aren't out of reach. . . and if you're in a bunker or such it can just teleport to the other side.

 

[Nifft]

I've seen movies where zombies take over the earth.

ZOMBIES, people. Cheap little cannon-fodder CR 1 zombies.

Those level 1 speed-bumps took over the earth. So yeah, I think the magic guys might have a chance here.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: the LeShay in D20

One of the things that some of us are trying to illustrate is that, as a system, D20 tends to undervalue the dangerousness of anything beyond small arms, which stacks the deck to a certain extent.

Re: Zombie apocalypses

Again, the writing on those often assumes a few things about the preparedness of the military that may simply not be the case. If nothing else, they REALLY underestimate what the dictatorships of the world would do: any gov't willing to commit the atrocities against the living we've seen on the world news would not hesitate to use similar or more drastic measures against hordes of undead.

(And forget the nukes- remember what Allied carpet bombing did in WW2...a capacity we still retain. )

IMHO, the only way you get a ZA is via something like a global pandemic, and those historically have better vectors besides bites & scratches.

 

[pippenainteasy]

Where do people get this idea that weapons damage in d20 is linear?

In d20 Future, a 1MT nuclear mine (meant for taking out capital starships) does 5d100, average damage 275 HP. It will do more damage in an atmosphere because of atmospheric effects, but it would have to do more than 3x damage in atmosphere for a 1 MT weapon to have a serious chance to kill it in one hit.

Characters take x10 ship damage, so he would take a 50d100, an average of 2750 damage. That would absolutely vaporize him instantly, much less a 30-40 MT ICBM.

 

[wingsandsword]

Characters take x10 ship damage, so he would take a 50d100, an average of 2750 damage. That would absolutely vaporize him instantly, much less a 30-40 MT ICBM.

I've heard that claimed in some posts, but I didn't put it in my post because I couldn't find an exact rules cite for it (I'm away from my libraries because of my current military duty assignment and having to work with the SRD and PDFs).

If that's true, then a LeShay could still probably survive a tactical nuclear weapon 16d8x10 is 720 HP average damage, leaving the LeShay with 105 HP and able to use Heal every round for 5 rounds to recover completely. The ~20 kt weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be tactical weapons by modern standards (albeit a somewhat strong one).

By the way, no, ICBM's don't have 30-40 Mt warheads. Not even close, by a couple of orders of magnitude. No deployed nuclear weapon really went past 10 Mt, and those were replaced by smaller MIRV devices by the '70's. The 30-40 Mt range was more for tests, especially a few super-large tests conducted by the USSR.

Typical MIRV warheads on modern ICBMs and SLBM's are in the 300 to 400 kt range. Much beyond 500 kt is overkill in destroying a city.

Also, I find the idea that Earth governments would immediately jump to the use of ICBMs to be downright farcical, especially when the target would likely be moving at random around the world and appearing in major cities.

A mysterious stranger appears who has become best friends with a number of world leaders (including quite possibly pretty much everybody with launch authority for those strategic nuclear weapons, get the right handful of people on your side and you've negated that possibility entirely), titans of industry, religious leaders (and who could plausibly be appearing to be a religious event by his existence), and the first response is a strategic nuclear weapon?

Okay. Let's say somebody decided to shoot him. Sniper rifle probably doesn't even break the skin, neither would a heavy machine gun. It would be like shooting at Superman. Seeing bullets bounce off will just embolden his followers. Trying the typical tactic of an attack on him with a UCAV would just scratch him. Find where he is and drop a hellfire missile on it? Hellfires do 16d8, it would cause some HP damage and blow up the building he was in. The LeShay could teleport out, Heal up the next round, disguise himself and lay low while assessing the situation. The government that blew him up would claim victory. . .and he would reappear, making him look even more invincible, and rallying his followers even more.

Even if they went to nuclear weapons, why would they start at an ICBM or SLBM? Even with the x10 damage rule, he has a very good chance of surviving a tactical nuclear weapon. If they dare use a tactical nuclear weapon, and he survives it, why do you think they'd even try a strategic nuclear weapon?

At what point would they say "we aren't going to win this through raw firepower?" Earth militaries are not used to fighting things that can take a tactical nuclear weapon, survive it, and be fully healed up in less than 1 minute and then be on the other side of the globe manipulating the head of another nuclear state into retaliating in a couple more minutes.

It's not like whoever is taking him on will have access to his character sheet and know his DR and HP and immunities. They'll have to escalate, not start at ICBMs.

This nuclear strike idea also requires knowing where he is, and being willing to use that level of force on a target that could vanish in moments. The US took 10 years to find Osama Bin Laden, and that was with a massive intelligence effort, and he had the protection of one country and hundreds or thousands of loyal followers. Qaddafi was famous for not sleeping in the same place two nights in a row specifically to thwart attempts to kill him via airstrike, and he was limited to just one country, not the entire planet in terms of where he could stay. Imagine trying to repeat Operation Neptune Spear with somebody who can Greater Teleport at will and is pretty much as tough as Superman.

The LeShay could go anywhere in the world and seamlessly blend in. At the pulpit of a megachurch converting thousands to being loyal followers one hour and claiming that every patient in a hospital somewhere will be healed later that day as a show of grace, to being in a Mumbai slum healing the sick, to rubbing shoulders with the giants of Wall Street for lunch, to finding a wealthy billionaire with a terminal disease and curing it in exchange for "favors" (imagine what Steve Jobs would have done for somebody who could have cured his cancer with a touch), to walking around a small hospital in Seattle with Greater Invisibility up and using Move Silently while using Heal on every patient to fulfill that prophecy from earlier in the day, to showing up at a high society party in Paris that night and making friends in all the right circles. . .all in one day.

Basically the only way to kill a LeShay without very powerful magic it to use a strategic nuclear weapon, get lucky shot with a tactical nuclear weapon, or the ridiculously implausible scenario of him just standing there while a couple of army battalions opened fire on him simultaneously with everything they had. Yes, a strategic nuclear weapon could kill a LeShay, and a tactical nuclear weapon has a chance on a high damage roll. However, getting to the point where one could be used is extremely difficult and would likely result in World War III, not just from the use of a nuclear weapon, but the political fallout from killing a figure with such a following worldwide.

 

[wingsandsword]

Re: the LeShay in D20

One of the things that some of us are trying to illustrate is that, as a system, D20 tends to undervalue the dangerousness of anything beyond small arms, which stacks the deck to a certain extent.

The original reason I even used LeShay was to show that it's possible to conquer the Earth through means other than a straight-up fight of armies slugging it out, as human-like being (type Fae, but appears as an elf) with astronomical social skills and some very useful spell-like abilities. With just its skills and spell-like abilities it could probably either conquer the world or at least a big chunk of it through social means, the extreme defensive abilities are very secondary.

The hypothetical scenarios discussed here of a huge massed Earth army taking on a huge massed fantasy army also stacks the deck in the other direction to some extent, as well as the idea that the release of nuclear weapons is plausible in any but the most extremely dire circumstances.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Sniper rifle probably doesn't even break the skin, neither would a heavy machine gun.

Depends on the machine gun. The stuff carried by infantry or mounted on most land vehicles? You may be right.

The ones mounted on planes designed for dogfighting? It's a tossup.

The ones the AF & Army mount on tankbusting A-10s and certain helicopters? They'd penetrate, no doubt.

With just its skills...

Skills are not magic, though. Even though the LeShay is more convincing a rhetorician than Hitler*Jim Jones, he cannot convince everyone hostile to him to be in his BFF army. And even those he convinces utterly are NOT mind controlled. Some will see through his charade and act. Some may even act against the LeShay even though they are "friendly", just because he's "corrupting everything" he thought the creature stood for.

Humans are very good at killing those they love...and retaining that love even after the killing has been done.

The hypothetical scenarios discussed here of a huge massed Earth army taking on a huge massed fantasy army also stacks the deck in the other direction to some extent, as well as the idea that the release of nuclear weapons is plausible in any but the most extremely dire circumstances

Like I said upthread, what scenario is deemed "dire" enough depends upon the awareness of the military commanders assessing the scenario.