Question regarding Decanter of Endless Water...

[Nightfall]

Okay well I ran a one shot, (in the false belief that SOMEONE would actually run. I think I spent more time on NWN than I did on my character or the game). Anyway I sent these two players into the Dungeon of Death, basically cause the other two players didn't play. So I was going to make it short and sweet. But then one of them used his money to buy a decanter of endless water to flood the tunnels since there wasn't any run off. Now my question is this, can it REALLY shoot out water, especially at the rate of a gallon every 12 seconds?

 

[Mouseferatu]

Okay well I ran a one shot, (in the false belief that SOMEONE would actually run. I think I spent more time on NWN than I did on my character or the game). Anyway I sent these two players into the Dungeon of Death, basically cause the other two players didn't play. So I was going to make it short and sweet. But then one of them used his money to buy a decanter of endless water to flood the tunnels since there wasn't any run off. Now my question is this, can it REALLY shoot out water, especially at the rate of a gallon every 12 seconds?

On the "geyser" setting, the Decanter shoots out 30 gallons per round.

At that speed, though, the wielder must make a Strength check ever round or be knocked down, in which case the Decanter is going to go flying.

But really, it makes no sense that there wouldn't be runoff. Did the builders laminate the walls? Build with welded steel? What happens when it rains?!

I'd allow that trick to maybe coat the floors up to a few inches, but no more than that. Not with an entire dungeon, anyway. And it would still take a long time, time during which any inhabitants of the dungeon are going to come find out what the heck's going on.

 

[Eosin the Red]

Lum The Mads Intelligent Decanter of Endless Water could. She would tell you so herself The players hated those ego rolls vs a bag of water!!

 

[Nightfall]

They were standing right in front the opening.

I know I should have thought that Ari...but again this wasn't my best attempts, since I wasn't REALLY trying to do anything but entertain. But you are right, I'll make a Strength Check DC 15. Next time though I'll think of this sort of thing. Course this wasn't Rappen Athuk, otherwise I'd have said "This dungeon has it's own water source..."

 

[Mouseferatu]

I know I should have thought that Ari...but again this wasn't my best attempts, since I wasn't REALLY trying to do anything but entertain.

Hey, I fully understand. When you don't expect to have to deal with this sort of thing, it can easily slip by.

I'll tell you a real easy solution for next time, though. One that I use all the time.

Tell 'em the decanter (or whatever) isn't available for sale.

Dunno how you normally run, but I tend not to allow people to buy magic items more powerful than, say, potions, scrolls, and a few wands. But even if you normally do, who's to say that this particular village/city/whatever has a decanter available?

 

[Nightfall]

Gotcha. Not to mention next time I'm running a REAL campaign (aka an SL campaign) triple standard on all magic items, and half the usual gold. At least that's my intent.

 

[Piratecat]

Boy, they must have been bored... if you take a relatively small dungeon of 43,000 sq feet (ie 43 10'x10' sections), and you sat in front of it with a decanter of endless water on full blast, it would take more than 69 DAYS to fill it.

Yup, days. And it would take 7 days, nonstop, to fill this dungeon to a depth of 1 foot. A lot slower than I would have thought.

Head someplace like here, a swimming pool calculator. Go to the square pool and use the same height for both the pool's shallow and deep end. You'll find that at 30 gallons a round (which sounds like a lot), trying to flood a 10' x 10' room to a height of 5' would take 12.5 minutes. (Thus, a forcecage trap would take 25 minutes to flood, less the amount of space displaced by the victim... call it 22 minutes or so. I seem to remember that Dungeon Magazine made a mistake with this a few years ago, claiming that the 10' x 10' forcecage would take only rounds to fill up.)

Moral: it's not the magic item that's at fault, it's fluid mechanics (and maybe DM misinterpretation). Stupid physics!

 

[Maldur]

So if characters get their paws on several decanters, and the dungeon is watertight. they can sit in front of the exit. And shoot/spell/sword the bad guys at leisure.

Only the waterproof treasure survives though.
And it take ages to dry the dungeon to loot at leisure.

Might be a nice idea for an adventure: a flooded dungeon as a lost decanter has been pooring out water for several decades.
With underwater monsters etc.....

 

[Mouseferatu]

Might be a nice idea for an adventure: a flooded dungeon as a lost decanter has been pooring out water for several decades.
With underwater monsters etc.....

Hmmm...

*Scribble, scribble, scribble*

*Makes Swipe Idea cheack, rolls a 27*

Your idea has officially been swiped. Hope ya don't mind.

Edit: I mean for my home campaign, of course. I'd never steal an idea for potential publication without explicit opinion.

 

[Nightfall]

Well thanks for telling me that Piratecat. Next time they do this, I'm rolling a LOT of Random encounters. I figured the dungeon ran at least half a mile down and probably covered around a 5 mile radius.

Trust me PC, I didn't intend on this. At least not mentally speaking. Some how though I'm not suprised. They did ruin my attempt at running a Freeport campaign.

Thus in effort to get SOMETHING going, I'm pre-generating some characters for them.