I think spells requiring cabals of mages to invoke are a bad fit, as @Oofta points out. BUT, whatever it should be should require powerful mages (or equivalent) to build are on brand. Only really rich nations can make nukes, after all, but they can be stockpiled, stolen, wielded by rogue elements, granted to allies and so on. Maybe something that opens a rift to Hell (or the far realm, or whatever) but can be targeted through clairvoyance. So a terrorist would have to be willing to die to use it to make their statement, but a powerful nation can drop it like a bomb from a safe distance by way of crystal ball.
D&D General Fantasy Equivalent of the Nuke
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
The mention of mage cabals made it click for some reason but I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this one
The basic premise was that most casters in that world had great control but mediocre power reserves while Lina Inverse had the inverse 
Something I was thinking about: what if it wasn't nations that had access to these superweapons, but big NGOs -- different religions, or competing wizard guilds, or similar. It might be the nations trying to steal the technology or get ahold of one of them. That would change the theme a little bit but might be interesting.
Voadam
Legend
Eberron's Dragonmark House Cannith?
It could be done and work but I think you would lose a bunch of the cold war aspects.
I think the Dragonmarked houses give Eberron a distinctly cyberpunk vibe -- in a good way, I mean. I always unlink them from race, though. It seems unnecessarily tacked on when what is important is the mark.
In an old campaign we played in, one of our players gained a "Negative Material" sword. It was made entirely of material from the negative material plane. Of course, we then had to track down a "Positive Material" sword as a counterbalance. Trust me, it made more sense in the actual campaign... maybe
Anyway, we found ourselves in quite a pickle as a party, ready to be wiped out by the DM's minions (this was in our era of antagonistic GM - players playing to beat the GM phase - fortunately we moved past that), and we decided to, as a last resort, smash the swords into each other. Kaboom. Made quite an impact on the terrain in a pretty good radius (measured in miles) too.
And that, kids, is how I met the sphere of annihilation.In an old campaign we played in, one of our players gained a "Negative Material" sword. It was made entirely of material from the negative material plane. Of course, we then had to track down a "Positive Material" sword as a counterbalance. Trust me, it made more sense in the actual campaign... maybe
Anyway, we found ourselves in quite a pickle as a party, ready to be wiped out by the DM's minions (this was in our era of antagonistic GM - players playing to beat the GM phase - fortunately we moved past that), and we decided to, as a last resort, smash the swords into each other. Kaboom. Made quite an impact on the terrain in a pretty good radius (measured in miles) too.
jgsugden
Legend
What are the essential elements of a Nuclear bomb? Massive destruction. Permanent damage. If unchecked, it would destroy the world.
One option to me would be unleashing the Elder Gods upon the world. Manifesting the physical forms of Cthulhu, Dagon, and other nightmare creatures with alien mindscapes would invoke those ideas.
Another would be an actual bomb. I had a homebrew spell in the 1980s that was essentially designed to be Meteor Swarm on Steroids. This 12th level spell unleashed 25 AD&D Meteor Swarm spells in Sight Range, with 8d6 each of fire, lightning, acid, and sonic damage to everything within 1 mile of the caster. It was used three times in my campaign history, and each time it was the culmination of a campaign and the land where it was cast was never revisited again.
Another is to cut off an entire area from the Magical Weave. In my setting this would make Divine, Nature and Arcane magic impossible.
Finally, the Walking Dead style plague. Unleash an illness that spreads across the land and kills a good portion of the populace - and anyone that is infected is subject to a curse that can only be removed by Wish that raises you as infectious undead when you die.
Redwizard007
Adventurer
If you are looking for a nuke-equivalent, I'd be inclined to suggest something like the Orbs of Dragonkind, a Sphere of Annihilation, Tomes of Golemn Manufacturing or similar. They all make for great arms race type scenarios.
Those are all true but I thik the most important factor is what it takes to create, control and propagate that destructive power. There can't be just one, because it become the Death Star -- which, while interesting, is a different kind of story.
My issue with this and the necrobomb idea is that they would continue on their own ina way that nukes really won't, so a single incident is potentially world ending (as opposed to requiring MAD to kill everyone). Maybe a spell that sends a city to the Far Realm, tho!
As we have discussed previously in the thread, the problem with it being a spell is that while the weapon should need lots of experts (and money and infrastructure) to create, the weapon should, once created, be able to fall into the wrong hands.
This is interesting because while devastating it might no destructive. That region is suddenly living in the mundane medieval period. Ewww. But what if they started developing technology...?
Again, I don't like this one if it can spread. But if it creates a contained zone of negative energy , that's interesting. It would be like those theoretical bombs that left all the buildings and just killed all the people: adventurers could be tempted to go to the necrozone to collect treasure or find secrets or whatever, but don't die there!
I think that most of the responses are getting the basics wrong. They are focusing on the bomb and not getting its nature right.
They key element of nuclear weapons in the real world is that the physics is pretty straight forward but the engineering and construction is difficult and needs a strong manufacturing base to accomplish.
The bottlenecks to effective Canned Sunshine is production of sufficient raw materials in the required purities and the manufacture of precision components needed to make that material go Bang rather than Fizz.
Both of these need a substantial industrial base and the ability to mass manufacture precision components and that is just for the bomb.
The delivery systems (rockets and bombers) also need even more precision mass manufacturing capacity.
This means a lot of interesting technical secrets known to varying degrees by an awful lot of people, giving plenty of targets for various intelligence and counter intelligence agencies to get their teeth into.
The complete opposite of the small cabal of arcanists that have the Apocalypse Spell (Like the "Rain of Colourless Fire")
This world is going to be closer to Ebberon but even less D&D'ish. The states are stronger and have much more control of their borders and internal policing. No untamed frontiers, magic is less trad D&D and more steampunk/artificer based.
Little or no high level magic (spells past 5th level or so).
Some ideas
Altar of divine rage
A meticulously crafted altar in suitable metals and rare materials infused with divine energy from a god of rage and fury, "consecrated" in a (holy number -1) sacrifices.
To trigger it need a last sacrifice of an enraged person "blessed" with a lv2 divine spell, during a suitable ceremony (religion check dc15?)
Primary Effect:
Waves of divine energy causing everything in range (15km/10 miles diameter) to strike out in indisrimitive fury and rage. This effect continue for some days before weakening.
Lingering effect:
For decades to come, the altar will randomly emit weaker versions of the rage, making permanent reclamig of the aria extremely difficult.
Planar disposition engine
Based from a combination of a spelljammer engine, Gate spells and and the fundamentals of demiplanes, this intricate arcane device was originally considered a failed protect, until a desperate war wizard noticed the effect of a deliberate overload will cause.
The device needs a significant time to charge up, and a significant final jolt of arcane energy to detonate.
Primary effect:
Instead of plain shift itself it will instead shift in another planes property in a large aria. The plane in question is random, and the device will continue to shift to new places every couple of minutes, cycling through many planes before running out of energy. ( in practical terms the aria will be hit by new natural disaster every 10-20 minutes for a couple of hours.)
Lingering Effect:
Planar boundaries in the aria weakened and other planes spontaneously bleed over for some centuries to come.
Altar of divine rage
A meticulously crafted altar in suitable metals and rare materials infused with divine energy from a god of rage and fury, "consecrated" in a (holy number -1) sacrifices.
To trigger it need a last sacrifice of an enraged person "blessed" with a lv2 divine spell, during a suitable ceremony (religion check dc15?)
Primary Effect:
Waves of divine energy causing everything in range (15km/10 miles diameter) to strike out in indisrimitive fury and rage. This effect continue for some days before weakening.
Lingering effect:
For decades to come, the altar will randomly emit weaker versions of the rage, making permanent reclamig of the aria extremely difficult.
Planar disposition engine
Based from a combination of a spelljammer engine, Gate spells and and the fundamentals of demiplanes, this intricate arcane device was originally considered a failed protect, until a desperate war wizard noticed the effect of a deliberate overload will cause.
The device needs a significant time to charge up, and a significant final jolt of arcane energy to detonate.
Primary effect:
Instead of plain shift itself it will instead shift in another planes property in a large aria. The plane in question is random, and the device will continue to shift to new places every couple of minutes, cycling through many planes before running out of energy. ( in practical terms the aria will be hit by new natural disaster every 10-20 minutes for a couple of hours.)
Lingering Effect:
Planar boundaries in the aria weakened and other planes spontaneously bleed over for some centuries to come.
MarkB
Legend
I'm suddenly reminded of Larry Niven's short story The Magic Goes Away. It had the premise that magic is a natural resource drawn from the surrounding world, and it's apocalyptic scenario was the development of a relatively simple means of deliberately consuming and expending all magic in a large area.
The principle was simple - a device that would draw in magical energy in a small area, then use that magic to power itself up and draw more power in, cascading in a positive feedback loop until an entire area became the equivalent of an anti-magic zone.
That could be a pretty terrible threat to an Eberron-style wide magic setting. Having all magic become inert within a major city could cripple it, or worse - in the short story, it caused the fall of Atlantis.
It is pretty setting-specific, of course.
The principle was simple - a device that would draw in magical energy in a small area, then use that magic to power itself up and draw more power in, cascading in a positive feedback loop until an entire area became the equivalent of an anti-magic zone.
That could be a pretty terrible threat to an Eberron-style wide magic setting. Having all magic become inert within a major city could cripple it, or worse - in the short story, it caused the fall of Atlantis.
It is pretty setting-specific, of course.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I prefer the talisman of final destruction, a single-use magic item from the adventure "Sleeping Dragon," by Bill Slavicsek, (Dungeon #48) which summons the Tarrasque to you and lets you give it one order, which it carries out for 1d6+8 days, after which there's a 50% chance that it goes back into hibernation...and a 50% chance that it immediately seeks to destroy the talon's user.
Also, in Reverse Dungeon (affiliate link) there are single-person recreations of rain of colorless fire and invoked devastation, which while less powerful than the originals, can potentially be learned by a PC. Casting either deals Hit Dice of damage equal to the caster's level, over an area a number of miles in diameter equal to the caster's level...though it also kills the caster in the process.
jgsugden
Legend
Then you have a story with technology. I have a 40 year old setting. There is a Weave Dead region of 'space' with worlds that have developed technology. One is essentially Gamma World, another is a Modern World, and the last is a 1900s era technology world that is struggling to fend off invaders from the Far Realm and Supernatural Threats (as the Supernatural, in my world, is not tied to the weave and thus operates in magic dead areas). I rarely tie them into my main setting adventures on my primary world, but technically they are part of the same cosmology and there are beings that can, and do, access the technology of these worlds.
It doesn't break the game. It just opens up different potential stories.
MonsterEnvy
Legend
Maybe, there is no for sure source or cause for the Mourning other than what individual DMs decide.
aimed was a typo of claimed. I was talking about result of how both ended their respective wars & left everyone a bit aghast at the thought that it could happen again was very much an analog though. All of the possible hints at how it could have been triggered make for fertile ground to draw inspiration from
The Mourning works great for the other nuke plot line: getting it first, or stopping others from getting it. If the world assumes the Mourning happened because some weapon research went awry, it might stop the war but it won't stop the hunt for the weapon. That's a fun, cool story, buy not really the one I'm interested in.aimed was a typo of claimed. I was talking about result of how both ended their respective wars & left everyone a bit aghast at the thought that it could happen again was very much an analog though. All of the possible hints at how it could have been triggered make for fertile ground to draw inspiration from
EzekielRaiden
Legend
Final Fantasy XIV has you covered. The nuke-equivalent is primals, also known as "eikons," "eidolons," "kami," or "summoned deities." But "primal" is the most common term used in-game, so I'm sticking with that.
Avoiding spoilers (because boy howdy are there a ton on this subject), a primal is a being created through a ritual which consumes a very large quantity of aether (the raw material of magic, souls, life, etc.) As part of the ritual, the people performing it express their fervent devotion to whatever deity they value most, e.g. the first primal the player character faces is Ifrit, the fiery semi-reptilian deity of the Amalj'aa. This devotion, through the ritual, transforms the provided aether into a magical construct that retains the full force of all the energy put into it, and is capable of incredible feats of magic and destruction (or creation, for the few that actually care about that.)
Unfortunately, there are three extremely serious problems with the creation of a primal. They are, in no particular order:
And finally, as the sauce atop this garbage sundae? There's a cult of weird immortal jerks, the Ascians, who are responsible for making sure that every disenfranchised group the world over knows exactly how to perform these summonings, and even how to power them up with ritual sacrifice of other people.
Primals. They're the perfect magical nuclear weapon analogue.
Avoiding spoilers (because boy howdy are there a ton on this subject), a primal is a being created through a ritual which consumes a very large quantity of aether (the raw material of magic, souls, life, etc.) As part of the ritual, the people performing it express their fervent devotion to whatever deity they value most, e.g. the first primal the player character faces is Ifrit, the fiery semi-reptilian deity of the Amalj'aa. This devotion, through the ritual, transforms the provided aether into a magical construct that retains the full force of all the energy put into it, and is capable of incredible feats of magic and destruction (or creation, for the few that actually care about that.)
Unfortunately, there are three extremely serious problems with the creation of a primal. They are, in no particular order:
- Because primals are created by fervent worship, they are born with an intense desire to force other beings to follow them as well--they are jealous gods. This makes them extremely aggressive and dangerous (hence why most are destructive rather than constructive.) In most cases, primals are summoned by desperate groups looking for salvation from their troubles, so the destruction generally has a salvific/righting-wrongs edge to it that makes the situation even more difficult.
- Due to the specific nature of the summoning ritual...the being created can mind control (usually called "Tempering") anyone nearby. Only a very few people are immune to this effect, the player character being one of them. You literally only need to be physically close to the primal and they can temper you, making you (at absolute best) a fanatically devoted worshiper, and at worst zombie-like or even catatonic. No one has ever found a cure for tempering, and tempered people cannot be allowed to live, as their very existence empowers and sustains the primal, which is bad because...
- Primals innately drain the aether of the land around them. They are, in effect, an unstable magical reaction slowly "burning up" the aether they're made of. If they don't get new sources of it, they'll die--so they constantly absorb aether from the land and even from people. If a primal is allowed to run amok for an extended period of time, an entire region could be sucked dry of aether, leaving a barren wasteland, devoid of life. (All life in FFXIV requires a steady flow of aether in and out--if the aether is removed or ceases flowing, life simply ends.)
And finally, as the sauce atop this garbage sundae? There's a cult of weird immortal jerks, the Ascians, who are responsible for making sure that every disenfranchised group the world over knows exactly how to perform these summonings, and even how to power them up with ritual sacrifice of other people.
Primals. They're the perfect magical nuclear weapon analogue.
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