30th-level PC versus kingdom--who wins?

[jensun]

It depends on what your definition of "win" is.

Do you need to leave the town in smoking ruins with it population dead? Alterantively is slowly destroying the area and dispersing the population through famine, war, drought or disease acceptable?

If the latter then any spellcaster can do it once they start getting access to control weather. Druids almost certainly have some dodgy plant destroying spells to kill crops or plant growth to ldrive out crops with the native flora. Control Winds on its own (at character level 9) can destroy huge swathes of farmland. Some of these tactics may be available at even earlier levels if you can access scrolls.

Diplomacy based characters can destroy whole regions over time by inciting riots, civil unrest of war between neighbouring regions. This can happen from as early as level 1 depending on the level of permitted cheese.

EDIT: if the challenge is to actually destroy the town and kill everyone there then you must have a spellcaster. Fighter types dont have access to the resources necessary to commit wide scale destruction of property without a degree of investment in magic items. Then its just a case of determing the EL of the major NPC's who will remain in the area. You might want to add a bit of a modifier for the general population but the reality is after a certain level they become mostly irrelevant. The EL would also be adjusted to account for the fact that not all of the NPC's will be able to react at the same time. Given the ease of scry and die tactics I would expect many of them to be quickly picked off one at a time leaving the town or region defenceless.

 

[IceFractal]

Depends on how suited the character is to kingdom-destruction. Even a spellcaster, generally quite suited to this type of endeavor, could be fairly ineffective if their spells were selected for fighting single powerful opponents.

So let's assume a character designed for the purpose of kingdom destruction. Even then, it depends on how you define destroying a kingdom. Would assassinating the leaders and healers and then spreading a plague do it? Or do you have to personally kill every citizen and raze every building to the ground?


As for a starter town, I'm thinking much lower than 12th. If we use the demographic info loseth posted, a 6th-7th level Warlock could probably take it down with ease. In fact, if you had a solid plan to deal with the Adept and Magewright, you might be able to do it several levels earlier.


Heck, with the small number of divine casters, you might be able to do it as early as 3rd level. Take Fell Drain as a feat, and go around killing a few commoners with Fell Drain cantrips. Once they rise as Wights, the few Clerics are going to have a significant problem on their hands. And if you can help that along by assassinating some of the lower-level ones, all the better.

Best Case Scenario: All citizens dead, town permanently infested with undead, from one or two day's worth of spells.

 

[Creamsteak]

I'd take a wizard/sorcerer, rogue, bard, or druid for this. Cleric if it's the right kind of god.

I would say a 17th level druid can handle most cities. They are also at the range where, prepared, they can basically level a battlefield. A wizard, from my perspective, is going to get hurt somewhere along those lines, and they lack the versitility. I'd take the wizard at 21st+.

The rogue or bard don't use the same methods, and supposing they have a workable plan to lead to the cities demise (convince the authorities to send most of their standing army on a bad lead, meanwhile convincing a neighboring hostile country to invade) only needs a respectable level (10th) to have a 50/50 chance.

The only problem that crops up against the nation is that you're essentially fighting against the buying power of the entire economy. You're fighting against the entire population. If you're goal is to kill them to the man you pretty-much have to be a high level spellcaster. If you're goal is simply to destroy their cities, well... still a spellcaster, but much less work. If all you have to do is overthrow a government... well that seems in range for just about any class (ala conan) at just about any level range depending on circumstances and ability. If I were taking a druid against a nation with intent to basically wreck the place, I'd peg it at 40th. 30th is powerful enough to do the deed, but you need to be able to do the deed, and handle the massive backlash (planar assassin hired for a hundred million gold by the coffers of every lord and every peasent, divine intervention, sudden interferance by ADDITIONAL nations etc.).

Also consider that some magic mcguffin probably can do the job for you at much lower level.

 

[Slife]

Also relevant: How min/maxed the character is.
QUOTE]

Good point. Let's assume that the PC has not been min-maxed for this specific purpose, but is instead a general-purpose evil PC.

Well, there are several fairly easy to do tricks for killing cities

There's Chuck, which is fairly easy to pull off:
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=852524

And the spell Apocalypse from the Sky, which can be metamagiced to even more death than it already has. Combine it with a way to bypass the artifact material component.

Or the single item one:
Get a chaotic-good candle of invocation. The alignment of the candle *only* determines the alignment of the creatures called with the gate function, and isn't related to your alignment for this purpose.
Summon a titan. Give him the following order.
"Use your gate Spell-Like Ability to Gate in another Titan. Order him to obey me completely, and give him this order"
There you go. An infinite titan loop. On round two, the entire universe has been filled with titans (if a gated creature acts immediately). Otherwise, you just have an eternal army of disposable titans.

Or you can use the spell shades to duplicate dragon ally. Normally you have to make a contract with the dragon for any service, *but* you have him on the ropes since. He's a quasi-real illusion, and if he declines to obey you completely the spell duration expires and he stops existing. No XP component, no material component, cast twice a day for a year and you have over 700 dragons to wreak havoc.

 

[jensun]

Get a chaotic-good candle of invocation. The alignment of the candle *only* determines the alignment of the creatures called with the gate function, and isn't related to your alignment for this purpose.
Summon a titan. Give him the following order.
"Use your gate Spell-Like Ability to Gate in another Titan. Order him to obey me completely, and give him this order"
There you go. An infinite titan loop. On round two, the entire universe has been filled with titans (if a gated creature acts immediately). Otherwise, you just have an eternal army of disposable titans.

Arguably that involves giving the titan more than one command allowed by the direct control portion of Gate.

 

[trancejeremy]

Any campaign that had a 30th level PC should have many more higher level NPCs. Because if it's possible for one player character to progress that much, surely many others have as well, some presumably even more so.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

The good old fashioned spawning undead bomb?

1) Get a Scroll of Create Greater Undead - could do really nasty things to a settlement. For that, the best villan of choice might be an undead cleric - using shadows - create 1, command it, any spawn are under its control. Might not kill everyone, but it's going to be tough to stop? It's a pyramid scheme that could go horribly wrong if someone kills the initial shadow - but the cleric can't be killed by the shadows in that event?

Or

2) For bonus fun - 2+HD character, a holy weapon and a detect evil spell - find some evil 1HD commoners/creatures - make them hold the weapon. They take a virtual negative level - enough to make them die. Rise later as wights. Wights spawn too.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Obviously destroying a community is the same thing as break it's morale. Once it hands over executable power to the evil PC it is considered destroyed. At that point the evil PC can save the town, use it as cannon fodder, or simply raze it. The evil PC owns it.

This means an evil PC might win by simply kidnapping the princess if the king is sentimental enough. Other communities must be exterminated before it will hand over rule to an evil PC.

 

[Andor]

The biggest issue is defense against a scry-buff-teleport-assault once you get past the town level.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

To me, it is hardly a matter of doubt that in most settings a group of 30th level PCs could easily kick down and take over an average nation.

The far more interesting question to me is: Once they have taken over, what are they going to do with it?

And it is here that the adventure possibilities become truly interesting.