Weather control in war

[DMH]

Gods forbid! (about the mass raise)

It is in God Spells and I was wrong about the name- it is mass resurrection. It is a 9th level spell that affects 1 creature per 4 caster levels.

If rulers are killed, there would probably be problems and might throw the city into chaos for a short while, but would hardly destroy it

Destroy it no, but I think it would cause chaos for a while (depnding on surviving heirs and warring factions within the government, of course). There is also the problem with image- other nations and monster groups are going to see weakness.

I forgot about Earthquake, thanks for reminding me. Unoffically there is a major meteor strike in When the Sky Falls.

 

[Pyrex]

Don't forget the damage you can do with a (Sudden Widened and/or Sudden Maximized) Storm of Vengeance.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

That would work, if the evil humanoid races were not allowed to take levels. What keeps the 18th level goblin druid from sitting in a tunnel near the surface under a city and blasting it with control weather?

How does that goblin druid get to 18th level? He's had to kill hundreds of humans. When their armies stopped being a challenge (he no longer gained XP for them), he had to kill hundreds of, say, giants. And all this time nobody stopped him? Most kingdoms would be sending commandos after that druid and placing bounties on his head when, at 5th level, he single-handedly defeats a company of 50 warriors. "Vecna's Beard! This goblin shaman must be stopped now!"

If you assume that XP comes primarily from defeating opponents, then even a moderate number of high-level characters are hard to justify. Consider a world in which most of the beings are classed humanoid types. Getting 4 PCs to level 2 assumes the defeat of about 13 equal-level NPCs (13 equal-CR encounters). So that's a 4.25-to-1 winnowing; out of the 17 who started at level 1, only 4 make it to level 2. At that rate, high-level NPCs will be much, much rarer than DMG demographics suggest.

The point is, high-level NPCs don't appear out of nowhere, nor are they gifted with their levels by the gods.

 

[DMH]

If you assume that XP comes primarily from defeating opponents,

I don't. At least not for the classes that aren't fighters, barbarians and warriors.

then even a moderate number of high-level characters are hard to justify.

And you see the problem with the level ditribution charts. Now think that they also apply to humanoid communities (which they should) and see what a mess the rules have created.

But this is a druid we are talking about. He is going to gain xp from things like killing aberrations, stopping forest fires, acting as a diplomat for the fey to the humanoids, political fighting with other druids, assisting diseased giant clans and destroying undead. He is going to have druid allies from many different races and only something that can rile them up will get him to destroy a city (which can be many things city people do).

 

[Dark Jezter]

This thread needs more Kamikaze Midget.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Spellcasters are fragile. If they make a habit of summoning up avalanches and floods and dropping icebergs on castles in time of war, they can expect to be assassinated (possibly by their own side, if there's the slightest doubt as to their loyalty) during times of peace.

It doesn't make a lot of sense for spellcasters to walk around advertising "I'm an enormously fragile atom bomb." If they work for their governments at all, it'd have to be in disguise, or they'd have to use disguises in their civilian life.

While that's kind of neat -- and was sort of the subject of an indie comic book series in the 1980s -- it really suggests that anyone with a 19 intelligence would know enough to stay the hell out of war.