Searing Light

[Dandu]

Does Masochism actually allow you to survive infinite damage? I'm not that familiar with it, and to be honest, I thought you were joking.

Masochism gives you a bonus to attack rolls, saves, and skill checks per 10 HP damage taken. The surviving death part comes from spells like Delay Death, which allows you to not die when at the negatives, combined with the Diehard feat, which allows you to function in the negatives. Alternatively, you can Shapechange into something with Regeneration, which converts all lethal damage into nonlethal damage, then become immune to nonlethal damage via spells like Favor of the Martyr.

Granted, you have to find some way of not dying (or falling unconscious in the other case) when the spell expires, but there are ways around that. Offhand, if you're working through an Astral Projection...

As for Astral Projection then transiting back to Prime Material as a way to get a spare body: Wouldn't Similacrum do the same thing? Then use Magic Jar to possess your own double, and away you go at full power. And you wouldn't go leaving that nasty silver cord around, just waiting to be cut.

I was just proposing one of many ways of creatively solving the problem.

Also, that cord can only be cut under very rare circumstances. It's not going to snap on its own or easily. RAW, I can't think of anything other than a special Gith sword that would do it.

 

[Rakusia]

if you went into a new body would the cord follow you or would you just be a ghost on the matereal plane

 

[Greenfield]

At .0006" thick, you could create a circular mirror about 200' across. Time to enslave some Gnomish mathematicians!

And as long as you don't ever have to aim that mirror, that would be okay. But a wafer of glass that thin and that big will fracture if you try to move it, even a little And as impressive as a 200' mirror is, it's still not the single mirror version of Slay Castle though. You need an array, which means many, many individual attack rolls.

Note: While it's true that the Earth isn't "hiding", that doesn't mean you don't have to Spot it. PCs are frequently asked to roll Spot to notice important details, even if they aren't actively hiding. Try going out on a clear night, when you're away from the city lights and the smog, and spotting a particular star in the Milky Way. It's large and clearly visible, but easily lost against the sea of stars that make up our galaxy. It isn't trying to hide, but somehow it succeeds. And that's in the real world, where hard and fast Spot penalties don't apply.

Looking into the matter further, we might agree that the planet should be seen without a roll, Spotting an individual castle from orbit? It actually is hiding, a tiny patch of stone nestled amid green fields or mountain peaks, concealed behind cloud cover and atmospheric distortion, and surrounded by deceptively similar patches of stone, also surrounded by green fields or mountain peaks. And at a penalty of -528 per mile of altitude, even a natural 20 won't help. Skill checks don't auto-fail on a 1, nor do they auto-succeed on a 20.

 

[Rakusia]

again if you have a lens you could just focus the mirrors to that. only need a single attack roll and have a better chance of seeing your target since it could be used to scrye? your chosen target

 

[Pergentile]

Does Masochism actually allow you to survive infinite damage? I'm not that familiar with it, and to be honest, I thought you were joking.

As for Astral Projection then transiting back to Prime Material as a way to get a spare body: Wouldn't Similacrum do the same thing? Then use Magic Jar to possess your own double, and away you go at full power. And you wouldn't go leaving that nasty silver cord around, just waiting to be cut.

And, no matter which body you're in, you still face exactly the same basic problems in achieving orbital height and velocity.

Additional curiousity: Fabricate lets you convert 20 cubic feet of sand, caustic soda and silver into mirror. It doesn't say it lets you bypass this limit to create multiple mirror segments, then join them together. Each segment would then become new "raw materials" for the next Fabricate spell needed to join them, and you're over your volume limit at the start.

So the idea of crafting a single huge mirror is out. It simply can't be done, at least not by Fabricate. At 1/2 inch thickness you get 960 square feet. That's a shade over a 30x30 mirror, which while quite respectable (and actually structurally sound in a free fall environment) is well short of being "the size of Delaware". It isn't even enough to make a good solar power plant, in fact.

BTW: Do you know why we don't use glass mirrors on orbital solar power panels? We can make them survive the launch, but we can't make them survive the stress caused by temperature extremes. Direct sunlight and black shadow, with no atmosphere to help buffer or distribute the heat differential makes them shatter like a dropped Christmas tree ornament. And the larger they are, the greater the total expansion and contraction, and the more easily they break. That's why we use polished aluminum reflectors.

If only Aluminum existed in a non-industrial world like D&D. But it doesn't.

If the edges of the mirror are pristine flat and smooth, fitting them together and holding them so with something like force or immovable rods would get you one massive mirror.

Also, IIRC, I thought Aluminum was a base metal, as in, it's in the periodic table of elements, close to silver and gold and all those others, as in, it is the most abundant metal in the earths crust, as in, it is a simple matter to have it occur in nature, as in, unless your DM explicitly states Aluminum isn't on his planet, assuming it is shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Rakusia]

Aluminium (UK i /ˌæljʉˈmɪniəm/ AL-ew-MIN-ee-əm)[4] or aluminum (US i /əˈluːmɪnəm/ ə-LOO-mi-nəm) is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances. Aluminium is the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust, and the third most abundant element, after oxygen and silicon. It makes up about 8% by weight of the Earth's solid surface. Aluminium is too reactive chemically to occur in nature as a free metal. Instead, it is found combined in over 270 different minerals.[5] The chief source of aluminium is bauxite ore.
Aluminium is remarkable for the metal's low density and for its ability to resist corrosion due to the phenomenon of passivation. Structural components made from aluminium and its alloys are vital to the aerospace industry and are very important in other areas of transportation and building. Its reactive nature makes it useful as a catalyst or additive in chemical mixtures, including ammonium nitrate explosives, to enhance blast power.
Despite its prevalence in the environment, aluminium salts are not known to be used by any form of life. Also in keeping with the element's abundance, it is well tolerated[citation needed] by plants in soils (in which it is a major component), and to a lesser extent, by animals as a component of plant materials in the diet (which often contain traces of dust and soil). Soluble aluminium salts have some demonstrated toxicity to animals if delivered in quantity by unnatural routes, such as injection. Controversy still exists about aluminium's possible long-term toxicity to humans from larger ingested amounts.

 

[Pergentile]

So, the Wiki post shows that Aluminum is abundant, and reactive enough that it is only in alloys. Saying that the world of D&D isn't industrial enough to melt and separate metals... or to know of them so as it could be used in magical means...

 

[Dandu]

Note: While it's true that the Earth isn't "hiding", that doesn't mean you don't have to Spot it. PCs are frequently asked to roll Spot to notice important details, even if they aren't actively hiding. Try going out on a clear night, when you're away from the city lights and the smog, and spotting a particular star in the Milky Way. It's large and clearly visible, but easily lost against the sea of stars that make up our galaxy. It isn't trying to hide, but somehow it succeeds. And that's in the real world, where hard and fast Spot penalties don't apply.

Looking into the matter further, we might agree that the planet should be seen without a roll, Spotting an individual castle from orbit? It actually is hiding, a tiny patch of stone nestled amid green fields or mountain peaks, concealed behind cloud cover and atmospheric distortion, and surrounded by deceptively similar patches of stone, also surrounded by green fields or mountain peaks. And at a penalty of -528 per mile of altitude, even a natural 20 won't help. Skill checks don't auto-fail on a 1, nor do they auto-succeed on a 20.

Logically, it must be safe to stare at the sun in Dungeons and Dragons. The penalty to spot something at 1 AU must be ginormous.

Of course, that's assuming that size categories max out at Colossal, which is not a great assumption as a planet is clearly larger than, say, a Titan or a very large desert scorpion.

This I do not consider this challenge to be a valid one.

Allow me to be frank. There is being constructive ("You need to achieve a velocity of X") and there is not. This is not.

 

[Greenfield]

Aluminum is indeed a very abundant metal in the Earth's crust. Whether it's the same in the D&D world is an interesting question, but actually irrelevant.

You can't smelt aluminum the way you do most other metals. That is, bauxite (aluminum ore) doesn't give up its oxygen when heated, it remains aluminum oxide. To get it to give up its oxygen and become a workable metal, you need electricity, and not just a momentary jolt. You need lots and lots of electrical current over an extended period of time.

There aren't any electrical generating stations in the D&D world, at least not that I'm aware of.

Regarding segmented mirrors: Binding mirror segments with force effects or Immovable Rods sounds like a wonderful idea. How were you planning to aim the thing, if it can't be moved?

Aside from that, even the half inch panel I described would fracture if wedged in tightly by such means. The paper thin one suggested wouldn't even survive being moved into position to be bound.

Regarding focusing an array of mirrors onto a single lens: You send a thousand beams of reflected light into a lens, and you get a thousand beams of light coming out. The lens doesn't convert them into a coherent beam.

Regarding the use of Scry to aim the orbital weapon: Scry spots people, not places. Clairvoyance spots places. In any case, it lets you see them, but it doesn't tell you where they are, or how to aim anything at them.

Regarding sunblindness: You're absolutely right, by the rules the sun should be pretty much impossible to Spot.

And yeah, there are things larger than Titans, castles and mountains. But they're all the same size category: Colossal. And that means they all have the same size modifiers. Size modifiers are assigned by category, not exact height or size. Hey, don't blame me, I didn't write the rules, I just make fun of them.

There's a difference between game rules and the real world. Game designers can't write perfect rules. There will always be holes or inconsistencies. That's one of the reasons it's so hard to mix real physics into a game world, with or without magic.

 

[Dandu]

And yeah, there are things larger than Titans, castles and mountains. But they're all the same size category: Colossal. And that means they all have the same size modifiers. Size modifiers are assigned by category, not exact height or size. Hey, don't blame me, I didn't write the rules, I just make fun of them.

I don't believe that the size categories you refer to were ever intended to apply to planets, mountain ranges, and castles.

In any case, the game becomes unplayable at that level of RAW-ness so I consider this line of discussion unproductive.