| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| blade020877 |
Posted - 16 Mar 2017 : 14:17:47
Hello to my fellow gamers
So I am playing a game where I am leader of large pirate community (15000). But I have had a large invasion against me that has destroyed large part of immurks hold and in invaders control. So my evil plan is to turn a keep in to a flying castle. When that's done have a spell to make sure that the keep has an atmosphere (so can breath). Then fly keep up to 50-75 miles up and travel. So here is the evil mad scientist idea, if I build a platform that can hold wall of iron (20lvl) cast metal shape on one side of it to turn it into a point then push it off. So here is my big question much damage and area would this do? I do know higher I go more damage I do. Or am I thinking too much out of the box
Thanks for any fed back |
| 13 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 05 Apr 2017 : 04:15:30
quote:
Originally posted by moonbeast
It's much easier if your Pirate Lord just talked to Baba Yaga…. and then convinced her to sell some of her Soviet-era tanks and rocket launchers to you. After all, Baba is just letting them rot in her trophy room inside the Hut. Your high-level wizard enemies won't know what hit them.
P.S. — this was actually an (officially published) D&D scenario (in Dragon Magazine?) where Baba Yaga, the legendary witch, time travels the multiverse, and collects WEAPONS of mass destruction from Humanity's future. She's a crazy old girl, that Baba!
Hey, show respect to the honored grandmother! Those whose manners fail to impress Baba Yaga don't always live long enough to regret it. 
I recall seeing a reference in one of the TSR artbooks to Baba Yaga having a Soviet tank in her Hut... This was way back in the early days of 2E. I don't know where the reference was from, though.
I also think it's interesting how, no matter the ruleset or setting, Baba Yaga is always a terrible foe. In 2E D&D rules, she was easily the equal of just about any avatar you care to name. In Pathfinder, she almost single-handedly conquered a nation in a matter of days, and locked it into a permanent winter. In Vampire: The Masquerade, she was like a 4th-generation vampire, and she alone had a huge influence on supernatural happenings in Russia.
Edit: Ah, found it. Dragon Magazine 83 has an adventure based on the Dancing Hut, and it's there that the tank reference I recall comes from. |
| moonbeast |
Posted - 05 Apr 2017 : 03:43:47
It's much easier if your Pirate Lord just talked to Baba Yaga…. and then convinced her to sell some of her Soviet-era tanks and rocket launchers to you. After all, Baba is just letting them rot in her trophy room inside the Hut. Your high-level wizard enemies won't know what hit them.
P.S. — this was actually an (officially published) D&D scenario (in Dragon Magazine?) where Baba Yaga, the legendary witch, time travels the multiverse, and collects WEAPONS of mass destruction from Humanity's future. She's a crazy old girl, that Baba!
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| blade020877 |
Posted - 02 Apr 2017 : 19:36:53
Cheers for the replies, I only got back now to the forums.
I notice there is possible a few consultants to the big bang theory in here lol
Maybe if you understand the reason so out of the box idea is the campaign I am playing is very high level (28-35 level) with lots of high powered wizards. I am pirate lord of the pirate isles and have had immurks hold taken over by a combined force (cormyr, Implitur and Aglarond)
So at the moment cormyr has taken immurks hold and has occupied it.
So I want revenge and I have time on my hand. Plus if I can then make myself leader of pirate isles if I can take back immurks hold.
One of my main problems is my enemy have a lot of magic power behind them, so I need a non-magical way of doing major damage.
So that’s way I was going with gi Joe retaliation rip off (I know it’s a terrible movies lol).
So I need a mad scientist idea to combat them. If I can do so most damage in another area they have to pull back or give them an ultimatum…. Well it’s the start of a plan lol
Thanks for all the advice so far
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| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 19 Mar 2017 : 15:11:33
quote:
Originally posted by KanzenAU
How much damage would it really do anyway? As a reference point I'm imagining the Felix Baumgartner jump, but with him as a wall of iron (and obviously without a parachute). A 20th level wall of iron is a bit less than 2 feet thick, and is 100' long. So you've got about 417 cubic feet of iron to work with, or about 93 tonnes. Felix with his suit weighed about 110kg I think, so that's like dropping 845 Felixes at once. Admittedly that's a lot of weight, but I'm not sure it's going to have the evil mad scientist kind of impact you're hoping for.
Even on the very small chance you actually hit your target, I imagine you'd flatten a castle and surrounding area at best, or maybe even a city. Far more likely to happen is your wall of iron will land in the middle of nowhere. If you're a 20th level wizard, I imagine there's better ways to do flatten a city if that's what you're after.
PS Your game sounds bonkers, though a lot of bizarro fun!
I don't think it would do even that much damage. Terminal velocity is a hugely limiting factor, here.
I think this theoretical wall could, as most, take down a section of a castle wall on direct impact, or destroy one building and its neighbors, but not much more than that. And that is, of course, assuming it hits the target and doesn't land the next kingdom over.
The really massive damage comes from objects exceeding terminal velocity -- projectiles fired from high-powered weapons, or objects falling out of orbit. And note that falling out of orbit and dropped from space are not the same thing -- objects in orbit are travelling at thousands, if not tens of thousands, of miles per hour. The ISS, for example, is traveling at better than 17,000 mph to maintain its orbit 220 miles up. Even something very small, at that speed, can be dangerous -- the ISS got a quarter-inch dent in one of their windows from something believed to be a paint chip.
The mass of the object is important, but so is the velocity. A very high velocity literally multiplies the damage done, by even a small amount of mass. Look at the difference between throwing a bullet at something and firing it out of a gun.
That's why I say that the single wall of iron is not the best approach. For an aerial assault, you're going to do a lot better with multiple smaller projectiles -- the damage is spread over a wider area and is more likely to hit the target. It's not the single big boom, but it can have a lot more impact (pardon the pun) to spread the damage around.
And with a bunch of rocks, you can launch multiple attacks, even if only using one aerial platform.
Even if the goal is something like a bunker buster, there are still better ways to do it, especially with a 20th level wizard. Teleport in, drop a delayed blast fireball, and teleport out. Summon a lot of nastybads inside and let them rip into the defenders. Summon an earth elemental out of the very walls of the place you're trying to destroy, and let it do the work. Summon a pack of bulettes or a purple worm and let them make an entrance or several. Use rock to mud on a couple of load-bearing walls and watch the fun. If the stronghold being attacked is underground, do a Tywin Lannister, then commission a bard to write an FR-based version of "The Rains of Castamere" about it. |
| Starshade |
Posted - 19 Mar 2017 : 11:08:37
someone good at math, who can estimate terminal velocity of an iron rod? (not my Field). I know of Project Thor, a real life theoretical weapon by Jerry Pournelle for the US. It was to be rods of tungsten 6,1m x 0.3m at mach 10, doing damage equal to 11.5 tons of TNT.
But even Pournelle's tungsten rods at 10 times speed of sound was a bunker buster weapon. The plan was to aim at a spot, shoot into some target and eliminate it. A quick look on an atomic bomb eplotion calculator, i think the Project Thor was meant to make 50m diametre fireballs, I think you need some way to aim your iron wall, if it got enough mass to even do that much damage... |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 16 Mar 2017 : 23:50:08
How much damage would it really do anyway? As a reference point I'm imagining the Felix Baumgartner jump, but with him as a wall of iron (and obviously without a parachute). A 20th level wall of iron is a bit less than 2 feet thick, and is 100' long. So you've got about 417 cubic feet of iron to work with, or about 93 tonnes. Felix with his suit weighed about 110kg I think, so that's like dropping 845 Felixes at once. Admittedly that's a lot of weight, but I'm not sure it's going to have the evil mad scientist kind of impact you're hoping for.
Even on the very small chance you actually hit your target, I imagine you'd flatten a castle and surrounding area at best, or maybe even a city. Far more likely to happen is your wall of iron will land in the middle of nowhere. If you're a 20th level wizard, I imagine there's better ways to do flatten a city if that's what you're after.
PS Your game sounds bonkers, though a lot of bizarro fun! |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 16 Mar 2017 : 22:42:54
If you're trying to use actual science to determine your damage, I'd recommend you rethink that. In a world where a fireball can melt your sword but not your flesh, science doesn't really mean a whole lot. I can't see any DM going "yeah, you should get a comet like impact" because you aren't starting like a comet, which comes in at amazingly high speeds because space is frictionless. Instead, your thing would be starting out at a slow speed, at an area of the atmosphere where winds would be whipping hard. The world would also be turning beneath you at a different speed than you are. Also throw in that at this height you're amongst the clouds obscuring your view. I would honestly be surprised if you could aim that thing to hit a specific country, much less an island, much less a specific point on the island, and when it did hit it wouldn't be like the plans people have described for kinetic bombardment scenarios, because most of those involve using rockets to get up some initial speed and forcing you in something like a straight line. |
| blade020877 |
Posted - 16 Mar 2017 : 20:23:07
cheers for the advice, my idea was to fly in the Stratosphere (about 30ft miles up) well can be 10 miles will cause higher damage with kinetic energy (mass x speed). i can see what your saying by fly ships but i cant get large mass on a ship. is if i can cast a 20lvl wall of iron 5inch -100ft - 100ft ( 75 ton). then use metal shape (cast more then once) to make it cone shape. so will travel at higher speed to cause more damage. so larger the mass plus faster speed larger damage area. i see your point on targeting. but it is larger area damage. as the say concept if a comet is to strike the earth. as i said its the mad evil scientist in trying to break out lol |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 16 Mar 2017 : 17:10:16
What Wooly said... you'd do better with some flying ships or people ... maybe some mounted flyers who can simply dump things like burning oil, acid, extradimensional containers filled with rocks or arrowheads, etc...
Also, his comparison to airliners being 6 to 7 miles versus 50 to 75 miles... even more so brings the "you'll probably miss" factor to light.
Honestly, the whole getting a castle to fly thing requires so much magical effort that to use it to drop a metal thing seems like building a thermonuclear reactor to power a cigarette lighter. Finally, just to factor in as I was saying, someone does reverse gravity beneath your flying city... now all of these keen things you were going to drop go shooting up. Then they stop the reverse gravity.... all of those things hit your flying castle. A lot of those things that just went shooting up in the air might have even been your soldiers..... who rise up in the air 100 feet and then plummet into your castle. The radius of reverse gravity is 50 foot, so this becomes a 100 foot diameter of your flying castle that just gets pretty much whacked.
If you're playing in earlier editions, similar things such as magnetism can be devastating in battlefield use (i.e. enchant a tower of the enemy that's near some other towers... now all arrows fired suddenly converge on said tower... makes glassteel arrowheads very useful). |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 16 Mar 2017 : 16:23:02
I'm not sure there would be a need to shape the metal to a point. Unless it's fashioned into a giant arrow, your wall is going to tumble as it falls. And even with a point on it, it's the sheer mass of the thing that's going to do the most damage.
Another factor to consider is that for all the damage that wall is going to do, it's only going to do it at one spot. Get a bunch of rocks, say 50 pounds each, and chuck them from the same altitude -- you'll get a lot of damage spread over a much wider area, with a greater chance of hitting what you intend.
Also, 50 miles up is freaking high -- airliners, in the real world, are barely 6 or 7 miles up. Merely being a mile or two off the ground is going to have you unreachable to most foes, and you'll not need to put as much effort into life support (air and heat -- it gets cold, at altitude).
And for ground assault, you'll want that lower altitude. With terminal velocity factored in, there's no practical difference between several thousand feet and tens of miles. The higher you go, the harder it will be to even see what you're targeting, and without some sort of guidance system, you'll be lucky to drop your projectiles within a few miles of your foes.
If you've got the magic to make a flying castle, why not instead make a bunch of flying ships? Take your forces to the sky, let them attack multiple points at once, from multiple directions, from just high enough to be unreachable... You'll have your enemies high-tailing it out of there before lunch. |
| Kentinal |
Posted - 16 Mar 2017 : 15:52:41
Last version of rules I read, factored in was terminal velocity. At a certain speed of drop air resistance brakes the fall.
The carter impact I would expect to be 20 times the damage caused by a 10 foot drop. This based on rule that indicated terminal velocity was 20 times a 10 foot drop. Impact from a metal spear head (?), which I believe you are describing ( "wall of iron (20lvl) cast metal shape on one side of it to turn it into a point" ) would drive into the ground, building or creature at 20 times a 10 foot fall.
3.5 rules offered this quote:
For each 200 pounds of an object’s weight, the object deals 1d6 points of damage, provided it falls at least 10 feet. Distance also comes into play, adding an additional 1d6 points of damage for every 10-foot increment it falls beyond the first (to a maximum of 20d6 points of damage).
I am not sure weight of the level 20 spell level. |
| blade020877 |
Posted - 16 Mar 2017 : 15:26:39
that is true, might try figure out laser targeting with magic lol its not the impact that will do the large area effect its the shock wave, so there is two damage area i looking for. impact zone and shock wave area. like the idea of reverse gravity. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 16 Mar 2017 : 14:54:31
bear in mind, the higher you go the more likely you'll just miss. Reverse Gravity beneath a flying city can be nasty too. |
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