Especially in a world with a really evil DM.
And old style Wishes. 5e Wishes, not so much.
Especially in a world with a really evil DM.
Oof. That's a whole nother genre.Time travel magic.
Can it be replicated, because that's key from a genre perspective.MTG has the Silex, an artifact that when activated can decimate or even erradicate a plane. The strength of the blast depends on the user, and can go from nuking a small island to a huge explosion that causes a nuclear winter.Specifically the user pours all of their emotions and experiences on it, the more intense the stronger the explosion.
This would work if it involved a complex, esoteric ritual. But it still feels a little mundane.Summoned meteor strike.
Oof. That's a whole nother genre.
That's interesting. What's the mechanism for making rings of wishes such that the information can be stolen?
EDIT: What's extra interesting about this is if the wishes aren't restricted to being destructive. A cold war of people trying to stop their rivals from creating a better/perfect world is a neat idea.
I kind of like that temptation though. Sure, your mission is to kill the efreet and stop the production of the ring, but you could also let it go forward and then steal it so you can wish your dead spouse back to life..The mechanism/secret could simply be the ritual for binding a powerful efreet to the Ring (which is what gives the Ring its power, and which also explains why the wishes tend to go wrong/destructive, because a bound efreet it not a happy efreet!). Once you know the ritual (the bomb schematics) you can copy it and repeat it many times, but each time, you need a new efreet to act as payload (the plutonium)
You would of course also have a flourishing black market/espionage industry in old tomes, research etc that will yield the True Names of suitably potent efreet to be bound by the ritual. And of course the efreet themselves might get involved, vengefully for anyone who tries to bind them, or sneakily if it might be useful to let slip a rivals True Name to a ringmaker.
I think the reason i suggested that the wishes could only be destructive was to keep the Cold War vibe, but also because it eliminates a bunch of temptation on behalf of the individual engineers, spies, middlemen etc in the process to just turf all the spying business and just wish themselves a long happy life on Bikini Model Island if they ever get their hands on a ring. If all a ring can do is destroy, its utility to fulfil individual desires is limited.
There's actually a lot of pretty obvious & deliberately unanswered sources for it. Reproducing the thing you didn't admit to triggering & reproducing a thing that might have been caused by any one or combination of various things you didn't do are very different thingsI think it is more of a Manhattan Project type thing gone all kinds of wrong. That's a bit different.
Importantly, though, if it's not reproducible it doesn't fill the niche.
And old style Wishes. 5e Wishes, not so much.
Or maybe the efreet will only grant that wish without monkey's pawing you if you wish to burn a city first....I kind of like that temptation though. Sure, your mission is to kill the efreet and stop the production of the ring, but you could also let it go forward and then steal it so you can wish your dead spouse back to life..
That feels compelling to me.
Now. You're. Talking.Summoned meteor strike.
Because atoms as we known them don't exist. Everything on the prime planes is composed of a mixture the four base elements. Those things given the power of life and growth are animated by the power of the positive energy element, while those given the power of death and decay are animated by the power of the negative energy element.
So my campaign world has uts origins in my exercise to map countless DnD humanoids to countless countries and their national characteristics in WW2.I am a big fan of cold war espionage surrounding nuclear secrets -- mostly the real world stuff (but some fiction, too). I have long toyed with the idea of trying to create a fantasy campaign that fits embraces that genre, but I often get stuck on what the right equivalent of the bomb should be. Assuming D&D-isms (even if the game that I would use isn't strictly D&D), what do you think would make a good stand in for the nuclear weapon in such a scenario?
The one I keep going back to is dragon eggs. Like, the presumption is dragons are gone but eggs remain behind. Someone has figured out how to hatch them, though, and once hatched the dragons are loyal servants of the crown that hatched them(I am assuming some sort of "land magic" in the explanation). Also, these are not just dragons, but city buster dragons.
What do you think would make a good "nuclear weapon" equivalent in a D&D inspired fantasy setting? Remember, the pointof the thing is to drive espionage and fun spy action to try and acquire or preserve such secrets.
I think it is more of a Manhattan Project type thing gone all kinds of wrong. That's a bit different.
Importantly, though, if it's not reproducible it doesn't fill the niche.