Jungle Road Construction

[Baron Opal]

My PCs want to build a road through a jungle to help some refugees. Does anyone have any concept on how difficult that is? All I can think of is the building of the Panama Canal, the disease and the difficulties that would ensue.

I imagine that there would be disease, fungus critters, man-eating plants, parasites and vicious snakes, spiders and other animals. Not to mention some unpleasant jungle spirits and natives.

This jungle does have the reputation of being deadly, but I'm not quite sure how nasty "nasty" is.

Are there any jungle sourcebooks out there ready for idea mining?

 

[Tonguez]

Go sit in a sauna, then start doing some vigourous excercise whilst you imagine the snakes, spiders, vines, maneating shrubs, savage natives, stirges and any other threat you can imagine.

Plus the only way to make a road in the jungle is to cut down the jungle otherwise its just going to grow back very soon after (its a jungle in there!)

 

[Jacob the Impaler]

Roads are very impractical in jungles unless they are constantly maintained, as they are often overgrown in a matter of weeks. Long-term use is very unlikely unless it's backed by enchantments or lots and lots of money.

If it's to help refugees, it would probably be best to make a truce with friendly or netural forces in the jungle to guide them through safely. If they insist on building a road, make sure there are lots of clerics and cure disease scrolls and skilled guards to fight off ambushes and monsters. Magic is always useful to speed up the process.

 

[Arkhandus]

Easy solution:

Tell the wizard you need some woodlands cleared, and you'd like to see him just go nuts with Fireballs and stuff all week, and have fun with it.



As long as you gently nudge him in the right direction as he goes, the wizard should have a lotta woodland cleared by the end of the week, so making a road around there shouldn't be too difficult afterward. And the mosquitoes won't be much of a threat after they've all been haplessly incinerated. The burning stench and smoke should help keep bugs away for a while too, I think.

'Course, you may need a cleric to do damage control by levying Control Water, Control Weather, and such. Or go buy a Decanter of Endless Water first, beef up your fighter's strength, then tell him to hose the area on full blast each day after the wizard's gotten tired and gone to take his nap. After, of course, enough space has been cleared.

Or, have a different wizard or cleric start summoning Water Elementals to quell some of the fires.

Proceed to flee and recoup once the nature spirits or angry natives come knocking. Then go back and incinerate them too, or something.



....What? It's the adventurer's way. Just don't forget the obligatory looting.

 

[Sejs]

There is a spell in the Spell Compendium called, no joke, Junglerazer. Dru 3, Sor/Wiz 3.

Deals 1d10 per caster level (max of 10d10) points of negative energy damage to vermin, fey, animals, plants and plant creatures in the area. The area is a 120' line.

Seems right up your alley.

 

[Arkhandus]

Wait, it's a druid spell? Since when did druids like to obliterate swaths of nature?


I mean, barring those who go ex-druid and turn the dark side of the Blighter prestige class.

 

[Tonguez]

Easy solution:

Tell the wizard you need some woodlands cleared, and you'd like to see him just go nuts with Fireballs and stuff all week, and have fun with it.



As long as you gently nudge him in the right direction as he goes, the wizard should have a lotta woodland cleared by the end of the week, so making a road around there shouldn't be too difficult afterward. And the mosquitoes won't be much of a threat after they've all been haplessly incinerated. The burning stench and smoke should help keep bugs away for a while too, I think. Proceed to flee and recoup once the nature spirits or angry natives come knocking. Then go back and incinerate them too, or something.


....What? It's the adventurer's way. Just don't forget the obligatory looting.

Thats the adventurers way yeah! But you know that ash is a great fertilizer right and within a very short time the forest will be back threefold to break up the road. You also have the problem of trying to work in a toxic cloud of smoke

Plus you'll still have very angry nature spirits chasing you not forgetting the Creeping Jungle that will follow you for the rest of your few short days MWAHAHAHA!

There is a spell in the Spell Compendium called, no joke, Junglerazer. Dru 3, Sor/Wiz 3.

Deals 1d10 per caster level (max of 10d10) points of negative energy damage to vermin, fey, animals, plants and plant creatures in the area. The area is a 120' line.

Seems right up your alley.

So a Druid is doing 100 pts of undeath-supporting negative damage to Nature and he still gets to keep his druid status? Damn the rules suck!

 

[Sejs]

Wait, it's a druid spell? Since when did druids like to obliterate swaths of nature?


I mean, barring those who go ex-druid and turn the dark side of the Blighter prestige class

Heh, when they need a road through overgrown jungles, apparently. Look at it from another perspective: using a spell like junglerazer is far, far more surgical than hacking out a normal path with conventional methods would be. It actually minimizes impact on the environment.

Besides, nature obliterates huge swaths of itself all of the time, completely unaided. Forest fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, you name it. A road through the jungle isn't going to destroy the jungle itself, not by a longshot.

A landslide might change the course of a mighty river, but the moment a person does it some druids get all up in arms. Feh, I say. Short-sighted poppycock. A druid that can't think in the long term hardly deserves the title.

So a Druid is doing 100 pts of undeath-supporting negative damage to Nature and he still gets to keep his druid status? Damn the rules suck!

Negative energy is the energy of death, every bit as capital-n Natural as the positive energy a druid slops around each and every time he casts Cure spells. Death is necessary, and it is natural. Undeath, I'm sure we both agree, is not. It screws with How Things Should Be in a major way.

Junglerazer just makes things be not-alive-now, as neatly and efficiently as claws or a forest fire. The spell itself neither makes, nor supports, undead.

 

[Baron Opal]

IIRC, the carnivourus plants in B3 have since been reprinted, haven't they? Does anyone know what books those are in?

RE: Junglerazor - Egad, what a horribly effective spell. And I have a wizard and a druid in the party. They are both pragmatic enough to utilize such things, often without regard to consequences, I fear. Both are 8th level; the wizard has a six slot ioun stone. If they do the research, which they might not do, casting beams of negative energy would certainly come up.

I'm planning on looking up some info on building the Panama Canal and what I can in English on colonizing Brazil. That should get me close to what I'm looking for.

I'm really looking forward to vile fungus, particularly vegepygmies. I'm going to get a lot of inspirational value out of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, I think.

 

[Tonguez]

Negative energy is the energy of death, every bit as capital-n Natural as the positive energy a druid slops around each and every time he casts Cure spells. Death is necessary, and it is natural. Undeath, I'm sure we both agree, is not. It screws with How Things Should Be in a major way.

Junglerazer just makes things be not-alive-now, as neatly and efficiently as claws or a forest fire. The spell itself neither makes, nor supports, undead.

Yeah I suppose the problem is that in DnD Negative Energy is associated with Undead (someone who dies in the Negative Energy Plane becomes a Wraith etc etc), its also the power of Necromancy.

Personally I don't associate Death with negative energy, Death as you point out is a perfectly Natural part of Life and thus associates with the Positive Energy Plane. In my homebrew magic system things like Cause Wounds, Wood rot and other 'decay/harm' spells work by using positive energy to boost the activity of infectious organisms* (which a Druid is perfectly entitled to do) not by afflicting them with negative energy.

I can see the rationale behind JungleRazer but would prefer it was a Acid Energy spell rather than an Negative Energy one...

*imc I have described Oozes as giant ameoba related to slimes which are swarms of minature oozes too small for the eye to see. These mini-oozes can get into wounds, causing infection as they dissolve flesh. A Druid can pump these up with positive energy causing them to multiply and spread with added vigour