Xp Problem

[Greenfield]

Oh, how to make a city-busting bomb?

Delay Spell feat and Polymorph Any Object. Since the caster needs to be at least 15th level, that's up to 1,500 cubic feet of anything. Say Antimatter? Plutonium? Pick your poison. Neither of those, by the way, would be a castle or city buster. More like a planet buster, and there isn't a place in that world/plane of existence that will be safe from the blast.

Not that high a level? You need a tiny sample, but Major Creation works as well. Plutonium, U232, Thorium, any fissionable material. You only get 30 cubic feet at 15th level, but that's still a continent-killer, if not a planet buster.

This, by the way, is why I never allow anything resembling real-world hard physics in my magical worlds. As soon as a PC even alludes to "I want to research..." any modern world concept or weaponry, I shut them down, hard.

 

[Celebrim]

Oh, how to make a city-busting bomb?

Delay Spell feat and Polymorph Any Object. Since the caster needs to be at least 15th level, that's up to 1,500 cubic feet of anything. Say Antimatter? Plutonium? Pick your poison.

Even without questioning the physics, I know of nothing that implies either of these are available in D&D.

 

[Greenfield]

There's nothing in D&D to imply that there are city-busting bombs that can be "launched" either. But the player must have somehow gotten past that game-mechanical impossibility. Now we're just discussing which part of the rules got ignored.

 

[S'mon]

Per 3e/3.5e RAW, if he's high level he doesn't get XP for killing any number of low level monsters.

If this feat was a challenge & an achievement I would give some XP though, perhaps equal to 1/4 that of the XP for a monster of CR = PC's level; more if it was a more serious challenge.

 

[Grogg of the North]

[MENTION=6789007]victorcrossman[/MENTION] How did you handle this? Was the bomb a dud? Did it go off and destroy the PCs too? What happened?

Not that high a level? You need a tiny sample, but Major Creation works as well. Plutonium, U232, Thorium, any fissionable material. You only get 30 cubic feet at 15th level, but that's still a continent-killer, if not a planet buster.

<nitpick> You want U-235. U-232 has a large absorption cross section and would contaminate any U-233 you were trying to make from Thorium. Also, 30 cubic feet of unshielded Plutonium would be deadly to the wizard. </nitpick>

 

[Greenfield]

[MENTION=6789007]victorcrossman[/MENTION] How did you handle this? Was the bomb a dud? Did it go off and destroy the PCs too? What happened?



<nitpick> You want U-235. U-232 has a large absorption cross section and would contaminate any U-233 you were trying to make from Thorium. Also, 30 cubic feet of unshielded Plutonium would be deadly to the wizard. </nitpick>

I did suggest the Delay Spell feat be used for any of these, right? Becaue whether the resultant explosion is nuclear material going supercritical, or a simple matter/antimatter interaction, the result would kill the wizard far faster than a little radiation poisoning would.

 

[Dandu]

How valuable would plutonium, U-235, or anti-matter be?

 

[Celebrim]

How valuable would plutonium, U-235, or anti-matter be?

I agree that Greenfield's Polymorph Any Object plan would run up against this reasonable objection, but Major Creation on the other hand has no such limitation other than the fact that the material would not long endure. Major creature presumably can't create 'anti-matter' (that's not a legal category), but presuming you accepted U235 as a valid 'rare metal', it would still be around long enough to go critical.

Still, given that the explicit universe of D&D is one where earth, air, water, and fire are elements (so that presumably there are atoms of fire, and that minerals are formed by different physical arrangements of these base components), the idea that Uranium exists or that things have atomic weight and radioactively decay seems rather bizarre to me. My assumption has always been that the physics of the D&D universe are medieval or ancient Greek - heavier objects fall faster (whether or not they are in a vacuum), lead can be transformed to gold by physical rearrangement of its constituents or chemical reaction, kinetic energy varies linearly with velocity, phlogiston and ether exist, Aristotle isn't actually an idiot, and so forth.

 

[Greenfield]

Difficult to say. They aren't listed as "precious metals or minerals" anyplace in the rules, mainly since they aren't even acknowledged to exist in the rules.

But when dealing with a game where the DM has allowed a city busting bomb to be created, I expect that a "the rules never say you can't" argument would go a lot farther than it would in your game or mine.

I'm kind of hoping the OP will respond and explain this bomb.

 

[Greenfield]

Still, given that the explicit universe of D&D is one where earth, air, water, and fire are elements (so that presumably there are atoms of fire, and that minerals are formed by different physical arrangements of these base components), the idea that Uranium exists or that things have atomic weight and radioactively decay seems rather bizarre to me. My assumption has always been that the physics of the D&D universe are medieval or ancient Greek - heavier objects fall faster (whether or not they are in a vacuum), lead can be transformed to gold by physical rearrangement of its constituents or chemical reaction, kinetic energy varies linearly with velocity, phlogiston and ether exist, Aristotle isn't actually an idiot, and so forth.

I agree with this part wholeheartedly,by the way. My "plans" depended on exploiting physics in a magical world. Further they both require not merely the presence of fissionable materials and/or antimatter, they presume that the very concept of such things can exist in that world.

You could do a lot by using Polymorph Any Object to turn a cup of wine into 1,500 cubic feet of liquid Propane mixed with liquid Oxygen in the great hall, then run before the boil-off reaches a torch flame and triggers a fuel-air explosion. A bit less explicit in why it should fail. Other than the very concept, that is.

That's where problems like this arise, in general: The concept I can't tell you how many times I've run into players whose characters "traveled to the future and got automatic weapons", or PCs who want to research storage batteries and/or high explosives.

In first and 2nd Ed. these were a problem, since there really wasn't an applicable skill mechanic. The DM couldn't say, "Okay, make me a Knowledge - Nuclear Physics check, DC 35" to shut them down.

Exact exploits aside, the problem is largely an RP one, that some players are so set on "winning" at D&D they lose sight of what the game is supposed to be about. They refuse to play a person of the age and world, and instead want the admixture, someone who knows how to saddle and ride a horse, knows the customs well enough to get along, knows the gods and the greater powers, knows magic and has trade skills, yet also knows about machine guns, nuclear weapons, computers and automobiles.

In short, in trying to "win" D&D, they've successfully researched one of the very few ways to lose.