D&D General Fantasy Equivalent of the Nuke

[Imaculata]

I was going to say Wish as well.

A friend of mine ran a campaign about a kingdom where wishes were forbidden, and people were hunted who had wish granting items. The kingdom had suffered multiple catastrophic events due to people's reckless wishes, such as rulers or other people being killed, or transformed into animals, economies being wrecked, etc. In the hands of selfish or careless people, the power to wish for anything would be a disaster.

 

[Torquar]

The Scroll of the Comet from Icewind Dale is like a Tactical nuke.

500' radius, 30d10 damage, destroys all structures and nonmagical items.

 

[Lanefan]

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?

A new all-powerful destroy-a-city scale spell someone's been secretly developing. Tenth level where spells only go to nine, yet in the right situation almost anyone can cast it...and recently, someone did; which proves the spell is now fact rather than theory.

Howzat?

EDIT: or like @Torquar said in the post right above this one.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Many high-level, high fantasy threats are kind of comparable to nukes, at least in my campaigns. In my latest, 2-year home-brew starting out in Forgotten Realms I had quite a bit of space jamming around lvl 10-16. One of the major archs for that level span was baddies using techno-magic to throw smaller asteroids from the Tears of Selune towards major Torun cities - hello, The Expanse and ye olde sci-fi trope of asteroid bombing. My players managed to stop it, but not before Baldur's Gate was turned to ash and rubble. Pretty nukey imho.

 

[Reynard]

Lots of good stuff in this thread. Thanks everyone.

One of the keys to use this in a game, for me anyway, is the threat of the weapon propagating. That is what would drive the action in a theoretical fantasy cold war campaign. The problem isn't a singular fantasy nuke, but lots of them. I'm not saying there isn't a fun campaign to be had around "who discovers it first" but I am more interested in later, when it is more about catching spies and stopping terrorist states from getting it and avoiding deployment by rogue generals and so on.

 

[aco175]

The Elemental Evil storyline had some sort of elemental orb or destruction that created earthquakes and such, depending on which element it was created from.

 

[Argyle King]

Hire a group of evil seamstresses to create the world's largest bag of holding.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Storm of Vengeance already is sort of mini nuke. It has radius of "only" 360 feet though. We could also theorise tenth level spells that are even more potent. Perhaps complex rituals that can only be cast by several archmages in unison.

 

[Oofta]

In order for this idea to work, I think the McGuffin shouldn't be a high level spell or something only high level wizards can use. Part of the threat is a rogue faction stealing a McGuffin and using it for nefarious purposes, perhaps not even realizing exactly how devastating it is. All the work and magic to make the McGuffin so devastating was completed in it's creation, it just needs to be triggered.

Heck, the "oops we lost one" could be a fun twist. The McGuffin should be dangerous just because it exists even if no one touches the thing. Having a "magic bomb" opens up things like an intrigue arc where you know one of these things is being sold on the black market and that anyone who gets their hands on it could set it off. It also lets a fairly low level party get involved with incidents.

I was going to do mine as basically a magical nuke, doing massive damage with lasting aftereffects. That's why it was going to be force and fire damage while creating a wild magic zone afterwards, think long term effects after the bomb dropped causing mutations and weirdness like the Fallout series.

 

[Seramus]

A macguffin that increases the radius to miles, and the duration to decades. It is consumed on use. Wipe out cities with miles wide Cloudkills, or protect them with miles wide Tiny Huts. For decades.

The main draw here is familiarity with existing spells, and the choice of what spell to spend the macguffin on.

 

[Voadam]

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?

. . .

What do you think would make a good "nuclear weapon" equivalent in a D&D inspired fantasy setting? Remember, the point of the thing is to drive espionage and fun spy action to try and acquire or preserve such secrets.

Pretty Prince of Parties beat me to it.

Midgard from Kobold Press has The Wasted West (Midgard: Wasted West - Kobold Press) which came about through competing powers summoning increasingly powerful Cthulhu mythos type creatures that devastated the region.
So the espionage could be around the rituals, material components and individuals required to summon such things. If the control of such creatures is fleeting or patchy it could have the mutual destruction vibe that nukes have?

Wizard spells are a great tech secrets equivalent as they can be both stolen and researched independently. Also while high level spells are generally restricted to high level casters, scrolls in most editions of D&D can be created allowing lower level casters (or even non-casters with 3e use magic device skill) to deploy them.

Summoning Mythos type entities are a big nuclear bomb equivalent, summon them they do lots of uncontrolled damage on a massive scale.

In Midgard the competing mages of high magic civilizations unleashed the mythos summoning weapons leading to empire devastation resulting in the Wasted West that could have continued to be close to a world ending apocalypse that was only stopped by huge sacrifices to enact mythic time stop spells that slowed down the unleashed entities who are still there warping their immediate areas' realities.

Having super power empires trying to recreate the Necronomicon and sabotaging and stealing each others' research efforts is a good setup.

Fiend and undead apocalypse from wizard spell stuff would work similarly.

 

[Dausuul]

Mind control magic on a massive scale.

I'm thinking of a ritual which makes everyone acknowledge a particular person as King or Queen of some region (size of region determined by various factors). It doesn't force obedience--you can still commit crimes--but the thought of trying to harm, overthrow, or depose the monarch fills everyone with supernatural terror. You can overcome this with a strong will or magical protection from fear*, but neither of those is a practical solution for armies. The result is that kingdoms with access to this ritual tend to be extremely stable.

But. What happens when you use the ritual to anoint a monarch for a region that already has one? Answer: Chaos. Each subject's allegiance becomes a coin toss, so that every town and city gets split fifty-fifty, with the division cutting across families, friendships, religions, everything. Unless the two monarchs can work out a co-rulership arrangement (often sealed by marriage), civil war is almost inevitable. Even in a co-rulership, the smallest dispute between monarchs can trigger an eruption of violence.

The only way to fix the situation is for one of the monarchs to die, whereupon everyone's allegiance flips to the survivor.

*I think it's very important to ensure PCs and major villains have some way to negate the ritual's effects on themselves.

 

[Voadam]

The Greyhawk historical period before the Invoked Devastation and Rain of Colorless Fire works well too.

Two superpower empires (Baklunish and Suloise) with high magic archmage resources and knowledge to pull off magical nuclear attack type things.

This can lead to a cold war detente with lots of proxy battles and espionage. Magical formula and wizard orders standing in for nuclear secrets and programs.

Of course canonically it leads to the nuclear option with pretty much MAD for the two empires and a resulting desert called the Sea of Dust.

 

[TheLibrarian]

A ring of wishes would do the job quite nicely, to be honest, especially in a world where very high-level magic is scarce. Make it a variant that can only grant destructive wishes, but will grant them sincerely and without twisting, if you like.

Haha. Or a Deck of Many Things.

 

[overgeeked]

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 point of the thing is to drive espionage and fun spy action to try and acquire or preserve such secrets.

The wish spell.

 

[MoonSong]

Can it be replicated, because that's key from a genre perspective.

Yes, the original was an ancient artifact and was eventually destroyed, but they have learned how to replicate it.

 

[MarkB]

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.

Okay then, if we can't split elements, what about splitting elementals? Someone's developed a way to divide elementals into multiple smaller ones that quickly grow to full size, which was just an interesting convenience until someone else found a way to do it in a cascading chain reaction that would flood a region with both elemental energy and rampaging rogue elementals.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Recently, our group gained possession of an apparently canon Pathfinder item that is an inkwell that summons shadows.

Shadows being the D&D monster that must only be placed by DMs because their spawning mechanics can quickly turn them into an end of the world scenario if there's a population near them and no adventurers to gank them.

We have sealed it in a hidden vault and designated its existence as a state secret.

 

[Storyteller Hero]

Realmslore has Elven High Magic, which has groups of elven/drow mages collectively casting in a method that is allowed to surpass 9th level spells under the rules of Mystra's Ban.

Elven high magic

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Good call!

From the same source, The Scroll of Tarrasque Summoning also springs to mind. Because assuming the Tarrasque were to stay in the region, it's going to be uninhabitable for a while. And if it doesn't, isn't that mutually-assured destruction?

The Scroll of the Comet from Icewind Dale is like a Tactical nuke.

500' radius, 30d10 damage, destroys all structures and nonmagical items.