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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Other Soul Metal & Soul Stone: For VERY difficult dungeons



Altrunchen
2016-03-07, 03:28 PM
Introduction:
If you want to make a dungeon very difficult then consider having it be made of the following materials. They nullify any magic that they come into contact with, and any spell used upon them is wasted. They are extremely dense, hard, and posses a lot of hp per unit of volume. It is recommended that DMs use this if they do not want:

The dungeon to be dismantled.
Having magic be used to bypass anything in their dungeon.

Background:
I should probably mention that this was originally developed for a campaign centered around a homebrew meat-grinder dungeon for epic level characters. It's basic concept was born from trying to make a punishingly hard dungeon for incredibly powerful characters, each of which were played by veteran D&D players. They beat the dungeon and actually had fun doing so.

Effects of Soul Metal and Soul Stone:
Any magic that comes into contact with either of these substances is nullified/undone and the spell cast upon them is wasted. Teleportation, summoning/ magic involving the planes, magical communication, and any spell and/or magical effect of any kind that would entirely or partially involve a location where the object made of one of these substances would stand in its way is undone and the spell is wasted. This applies to all sorts of magical or psionic effects no matter what. Magic does not work on these substances whatsoever.

(Special Thanks to Jormengand): To clarify, neither magic nor psionics work on these substances. I intended for magic to be an umbrella term that included psionics, but I suppose I should be more clear about the intention of this stuff. Point being: if magic can't do something to this stuff, then neither can psionics.
(Special Thanks to noob): Magical items/weapons/spells and all related entities are unable to affect these materials. The hardness of these materials cannot be bypassed under any circumstances.

Example 01:
If a wizard tries to teleport out of a room where the walls, floor, and ceiling and made of soul stone, there are no windows, and the only door is shut and made of soul metal then the spell would involve a location outside of the room (the destination). What would happen is that the spell would not take effect but would be used up regardless.

Example 02:
A sorcerer casts Ethereal Jaunt on a creature and has that creature attempt to move through a wall made of soul-stone. If the creature goes all the way into the soul stone while ethereal then they are nullified and obliterated. Their soul, body, and all carried items are deleted. Only an unlimited wish or a miracle can bring back the deleted creature/items. Partial insertion into the wall causes for whatever is inserted to be deleted and undone. If the creature were to put their arm into the wall and pull it out then however much of the arm went into the wall and anything on said part would be gone. When they ceased being ethereal the part of their body would be missing along with anything that was on that part of the body.

Example 03:
Stone shape is cast upon a wall made of soul-stone. The magic is absorbed and nullified and the spell is wasted.

Example 04:
A magical caster attempts to summon something from another plane. Because this involves a location beyond the barriers of the soul stone, the spell is undone and wasted.

Example 05:
A character attempts to place a magical rune on an object made of soul-metal. The rune's magic is undone, but the drawing remains.

Example 06:
A character tries to use plane shift to get into an enclosure made of soul-metal/soul-stone. The spell does not work and the magic is wasted.

Properties of Soul Metal and Soul Stone:
Soul Stone and Soul Metal are both extremely dense, hard, and durable.

(Special thanks to: noob): It is immune to all kinds of corrosion and corrosive substances whether magical or not.
(Special thanks to: noob): Voidstone has no effect on these materials whatsoever.
(Special Thanks to dethkruzer): These substances despite their densities do not have a scientifically accurate gravitational pull. In effect their gravitational pull is akin to that of granite despite their densities.

Soul Stone:
Density: 0.5 kg / cubic centimeter
Hardness: 200
HP / cubic centimeter: 200
Melting Point: 20,000º C
Boiling Point: 200,000º C

Soul Mortar:
Density: 0.25 kg / cubic centimeter
Hardness: 100
HP / cubic centimeter: 100

Soul Metal:
Density: 1 kg / cubic centimeter
Hardness: 400
HP / cubic centimeter: 400
Melting Point: 40,000º C
Boiling Point: 400,000º C

Crafting with Soul Stone and Soul Metal:
If the players seek to use soul stone or soul metal for crafting then they will quickly find out how expensive it is, how long it takes to craft into anything, and how difficult it is to fashion into anything at all.

(Special Thanks to: nikkoli): Give the mass and difficulty to craft with, most people won't pay much of anything for bits of this substance.

Soul Stone:
Price per Gram: 2 cp
Skill Check DC: 200
Time needed to craft: 1 day per gram
Required Tools: Transcendant Stone-Cutting Tools (can only be granted by a deity)

Soul Mortar:
Price per Gram: 1 cp
Skill Check DC: 100
Time needed to craft: 1 day per gram
Required Tools: Transcendant Mortar-Creation Tools (can only be granted by a deity)

Soul Metal:
Price per Gram: 4 cp
Skill Check DC: 400
Time needed to craft: 1 day per gram
Required Tools: Transcendant Metal-Working Tools (can only be granted by a deity)

Chance of Crafting Success:
When crafting anything out of soul stone, soul mortar, and/or soul metal there is a 1 in 1000 chance of the substance(s) surviving the crafting process. If it fails then the substance is undone and is deleted.

Chance of Locating a Supplier/ Buyer:
When searching for an individual who will either sell or purchase any of these materials there is a 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance of finding that individual.

Acquiring Soul Stone and Soul Metal::
Neither Soul Stone nor Soul Metal Ore occurs naturally on any plane. It must be fashioned by greater deities from pure ether found inbetween planes. There is a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of being able to refine 1 gram of either material from pure ether per week spent refining it. Only greater deities can transport these materials via magic as only they have power enough to do so. No player character is capable of this no matter what.

Magical Effects In Soul Metal and Soul Stone:
Only greater deities can endow a magical effect on an object made of soul stone or soul metal. Anything less and the magic is undone.


SPECIAL THANKS:

noob (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?111899-noob)

For finding some loopholes for me to plug.


dethkruzer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?46191-dethkruzer)

For pointing out the fallacy of the densities of these materials with respect to gravitational pull.


nikkoli (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?96192-nikkoli)

For pointing out how much incentive there is to attempt to acquire and sell these substances.


Jormengand (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?71090-Jormengand)

For helping me realize that I should clarify how psionics were meant to be included alongside magic when describing these substances. I had assumed that it was implied.

Amechra
2016-03-07, 04:09 PM
This just comes off as incredibly passive-aggressive. And not even in an interesting way - it's throwing big numbers into a situation so that you can say "no" to your players.

You can't put it in an adventure without it sticking out like a sore thumb.
It doesn't fuel creative solutions to anything in the dungeon, on either the player side or the DM's side.
It isn't something you can use to reward players ("Because you wrecked that weird statue, you can now teleport in and out of the dungeon.")

Worst of all, it's boring. It comes from the Bigger Numbers = Bigger Challenge school of design, which is... not a good place to be.

noob
2016-03-07, 04:42 PM
I think that any correct ubercharger can annihilate entire walls of this(There is a cheap magic weapon which allows to completely ignore any hardness ever when you put the maximum in power attack and have a normal strength(25)(it was called something like dwarf crusher or something else)).
So it is as easy to dig through as if it was dirt and it is easy to dismantle(cut on all the sides of a cube in this material then you have a cube of that material that you will be able to sell for 4534!! gold because it have a market since people use it to make dungeons and so selling it is possible).
It will be basically like making walls of super gold which make adventurers even more richerest.
Numbers are in no way a protection in dnd.

Altrunchen
2016-03-07, 05:24 PM
This just comes off as incredibly passive-aggressive. And not even in an interesting way - it's throwing big numbers into a situation so that you can say "no" to your players.

You can't put it in an adventure without it sticking out like a sore thumb.
It doesn't fuel creative solutions to anything in the dungeon, on either the player side or the DM's side.
It isn't something you can use to reward players ("Because you wrecked that weird statue, you can now teleport in and out of the dungeon.")

Worst of all, it's boring. It comes from the Bigger Numbers = Bigger Challenge school of design, which is... not a good place to be.

You're right, it would stick out in an adventure. But that's not always a problem I think.
Actually I think it could fuel creative solutions because it can force players to think about something a different way since new limits are in play.
It doesn't necessarily need to be a reward.

As far as it being boring then I'm sorry, there's not much I can say about that. The state of something being boring or not boring is really a subjective matter.


I think that any correct ubercharger can annihilate entire walls of this(There is a cheap magic weapon which allows to completely ignore any hardness ever when you put the maximum in power attack and have a normal strength(25)(it was called something like dwarf crusher or something else)).
So it is as easy to dig through as if it was dirt and it is easy to dismantle(cut on all the sides of a cube in this material then you have a cube of that material that you will be able to sell for 4534!! gold because it have a market since people use it to make dungeons and so selling it is possible).
It will be basically like making walls of super gold which make adventurers even more richerest.
Numbers are in no way a protection in dnd.

I tried looking up that weapon but I couldn't find it. If you happen to remember the name then would you please post a link to its page here? I'm interested in reading about it since I've never heard of it before. Besides, that weapon only exists in a campaign if a DM lets it exist. If they have dungeons made of this stuff then they need only to ban that kind of enchantment.

Also, there are some problems with your solution. It's hinging on the idea that a magic weapon will work on the material. These materials absorb magic if you remember, so it'd be more like cutting something with an ordinary sword, in which case you still have to beat the 200 hardness. As such you wouldn't be able to cut up the materials to sell. And even if you found a way to do it:

1.) You have to find a place where these kinds of objects are found. Which is already hard to find.
2.) You still have to transport it even if you can slice it up. And remember that magic doesn't work on these materials and they are really heavy.
3.) You need to find a buyer. Since most people can't work with it then it's not exactly worth much to most people. The listed prices apply to people who would actually pay for it.
4.) That you can find enough buyers who can afford to purchase the amount of material you are trying to sell. Just because they are willing to buy it doesn't mean they can/will buy all of it.

I also put the numbers there just to tempt players. I can be sadistic like that.

dethkruzer
2016-03-08, 02:47 AM
No, just no. This isn't even funny. A one meter cube of this stone would weigh half-a-million kilograms, and would take somewhere in the ballpark of 1400 years to craft. It would also be worth about a billion gp...

Also, with a density greater than three times that of the suns core, shouldn't this stuff have its own gravitational pull?

noob
2016-03-08, 05:02 AM
Any magic that comes into contact with either of these substances is nullified/undone and the spell cast upon them is wasted. Teleportation, summoning/ magic involving the planes, magical communication, and any spell and/or magical effect of any kind that would entirely or partially involve a location where the object made of one of these substances would stand in its way is undone and the spell is wasted. This applies to all sorts of magical or psionic effects no matter what. Magic does not work on these substances whatsoever.
This text says nothing about magic items touching it and the ignoring of damage reduction is never said to be a magical effect and since magic weapons works on golems then I see no reason they would not work onto a wall with some magic preventing abilities which in no way tells it works on the effect(which is not magical since all the magic immunity I have ever met never protected from the effect of an attack done by a magic item) of a magical item hitting it.
What I mean is that you might imagine it would protect from a magic item but the text lacks immensely of rule layering for protecting it from interpretation.
So you should precise it is immune to magic items.
Also you should probably tell it is immune to mundane acid since nothing says it is protected against it and mundane acid is trivial to have in huge amounts(even more so if you cast fabricate from outside of the dungeon) and ignore DR and you can have 34235 tons of mundane acid for cheap and melt away all the dungeon.
Also you believe that you can not sell one cube of one cubic meter of that material only because you do not have imagination.
1: There is a lot of people creating dungeons and those people would probably want to have bricks or cubes of that material for building and would be ready to pay a lot.
2: It is perfect for creating molds: pour the right amount of acid at the right place and you can make a hole looking like an axe or whatever you want and if you do this with the soul metal you can then pour melted soul stone(you can melt it with a gate toward the sun) and you have a soul stone axe after cooling down and it is convenient for a lot of other materials.
3:Make armor plates out of cubes of that material by melting with acid the right parts and then make an armor of that material or use a mold of soul metal made with the previous method and pour melted soul stone and have an awesome armor that will block a fireball.
You see there is tons of way to use it but you lack the imagination to use it.

nikkoli
2016-03-08, 10:51 AM
If it is shiny PC's will find a way to move it and subsequently sell it. I once had a 100x100x30 room made of 1 foot thick adamantine walls with a similar sized door, and my players started with the door. I did not do the math for the cost of the room if they were to sell it. Anyway the door cost ~7.6 million gp, and the room was somewhere on the scale of ~9.8 trillion gold. Now thankfully my player that sold the door was a nice person so he went and got his stronghold builders guide out and built a 6 million gp house, and gave a bunch to his friendly neighborhood npc lich.
My point is PC's get creative to take all of the shinies.

Altrunchen
2016-03-08, 03:54 PM
No, just no. This isn't even funny. A one meter cube of this stone would weigh half-a-million kilograms, and would take somewhere in the ballpark of 1400 years to craft. It would also be worth about a billion gp...

Also, with a density greater than three times that of the suns core, shouldn't this stuff have its own gravitational pull?

If we were speaking entirely scientifically yes. But this is a world of magic and whatnot so I need only chalk it up to magic to explain that away. How broken is that?


This text says nothing about magic items touching it and the ignoring of damage reduction is never said to be a magical effect and since magic weapons works on golems then I see no reason they would not work onto a wall with some magic preventing abilities which in no way tells it works on the effect(which is not magical since all the magic immunity I have ever met never protected from the effect of an attack done by a magic item) of a magical item hitting it.
What I mean is that you might imagine it would protect from a magic item but the text lacks immensely of rule layering for protecting it from interpretation.
So you should precise it is immune to magic items.
Also you should probably tell it is immune to mundane acid since nothing says it is protected against it and mundane acid is trivial to have in huge amounts(even more so if you cast fabricate from outside of the dungeon) and ignore DR and you can have 34235 tons of mundane acid for cheap and melt away all the dungeon.
Also you believe that you can not sell one cube of one cubic meter of that material only because you do not have imagination.
1: There is a lot of people creating dungeons and those people would probably want to have bricks or cubes of that material for building and would be ready to pay a lot.
2: It is perfect for creating molds: pour the right amount of acid at the right place and you can make a hole looking like an axe or whatever you want and if you do this with the soul metal you can then pour melted soul stone(you can melt it with a gate toward the sun) and you have a soul stone axe after cooling down and it is convenient for a lot of other materials.
3:Make armor plates out of cubes of that material by melting with acid the right parts and then make an armor of that material or use a mold of soul metal made with the previous method and pour melted soul stone and have an awesome armor that will block a fireball.
You see there is tons of way to use it but you lack the imagination to use it.

First of all, this is a beautiful attempt at communicating in the English language. Well done!

Secondly, I have to break this post up given its...composition.


This text says nothing about magic items touching it and the ignoring of damage reduction is never said to be a magical effect and since magic weapons works on golems then I see no reason they would not work onto a wall with some magic preventing abilities which in no way tells it works on the effect(which is not magical since all the magic immunity I have ever met never protected from the effect of an attack done by a magic item) of a magical item hitting it.

Just because you encountered it before doesn't mean it cannot occur. And thank you for pointing out that it doesn't say that. That argument usually works in published materials but since I am the author I can fix that loophole with a few keystrokes. Thanks. :)


So you should precise it is immune to magic items.

I'm pretty sure the sentence "magic does not work on these substances whatsoever" covers that issue for those who are interested in reading this entry.


Also you should probably tell it is immune to mundane acid since nothing says it is protected against it and mundane acid is trivial to have in huge amounts(even more so if you cast fabricate from outside of the dungeon) and ignore DR and you can have 34235 tons of mundane acid for cheap and melt away all the dungeon.

What a specific amount, and good point. I'll be sure to make the substance even more OP thanks to your comment.


Also you believe that you can not sell one cube of one cubic meter of that material only because you do not have imagination.
I believe that the DM has the ability to control the player's ability to sell these materials. And I pointed out potential complications to your proposed plan.


1: There is a lot of people creating dungeons and those people would probably want to have bricks or cubes of that material for building and would be ready to pay a lot.
Once again, something that the DM has control over. If you don't want the players to be able to sell it, then just make it so that they can't find a buyer even if they convince themselves that they can sell it. Besides, you could always have it so that they find a buyer someplace else but by the time they get there, the buyer has already purchased what they wanted.

And just to be safe, I'll probably nuke their prices so that it isn't worth the trouble anymore.


2: It is perfect for creating molds: pour the right amount of acid at the right place and you can make a hole looking like an axe or whatever you want and if you do this with the soul metal you can then pour melted soul stone(you can melt it with a gate toward the sun) and you have a soul stone axe after cooling down and it is convenient for a lot of other materials.
Good point, I better make it immune to acid then. Thank you.


3:Make armor plates out of cubes of that material by melting with acid the right parts and then make an armor of that material or use a mold of soul metal made with the previous method and pour melted soul stone and have an awesome armor that will block a fireball.
All the more reason to make it immune to acid then. :)

If you hadn't have pointed these things out I might have overlooked them. So thank you for helping make these substances even more annoying.


If it is shiny PC's will find a way to move it and subsequently sell it. I once had a 100x100x30 room made of 1 foot thick adamantine walls with a similar sized door, and my players started with the door. I did not do the math for the cost of the room if they were to sell it. Anyway the door cost ~7.6 million gp, and the room was somewhere on the scale of ~9.8 trillion gold. Now thankfully my player that sold the door was a nice person so he went and got his stronghold builders guide out and built a 6 million gp house, and gave a bunch to his friendly neighborhood npc lich.
My point is PC's get creative to take all of the shinies.

Well then it's just a matter of dangling the prospect of a buyer for the super-rare and super-hard-to-use material without ever providing one. Or if you do then make it a whole campaign. That way you at least get content out of them. And just to be safe since you have a wonderful point, I better do something to send their prices through the floor. So that they just become an inconvenience like they're supposed to be.

Also, I know exactly what you mean. In the Tomb of Horrors module for 3.5e they replaced an adamantine door with something else and when I read it I realized that in the past that adventurers had tried breaking it apart and selling so they had to nerf it. So you make an excellent point.

nikkoli
2016-03-08, 04:51 PM
The buyability of this stuff is easy to argue from a players standpoint if you are running a sandbox world and they can just go up to the interplanar travel agency, but a ticket, wait in line at the interplanetary TSA and be off the the markets in the city of brass in about an hours time.

Edit: basically what happened to the aforementioned door.

Altrunchen
2016-03-08, 04:56 PM
The buyability of this stuff is easy to argue from a players standpoint if you are running a sandbox world and they can just go up to the interplanar travel agency, but a ticket, wait in line at the interplanetary TSA and be off the the markets in the city of brass in about an hours time.

Edit: basically what happened to the aforementioned door.

I see, thanks for pointing that out. Do you have any kinds of links that detail this city of brass? It sounds kind of cool.

nikkoli
2016-03-08, 05:00 PM
The city of brass is the Efreeti capital city. It is exceptionally wealthy. I would say look up on either Wikipedia about it or the Forgotten realms wiki. I had to do this research myself to make sure the city could have held that in its economy.

But it's like new York for efreeti's basically.

Altrunchen
2016-03-08, 06:02 PM
The city of brass is the Efreeti capital city. It is exceptionally wealthy. I would say look up on either Wikipedia about it or the Forgotten realms wiki. I had to do this research myself to make sure the city could have held that in its economy.

But it's like new York for efreeti's basically.

Neat. Well at the end of the day it's really about the players having fun right? So if they're having a good time then somethings probably being done right. So what I'm saying is if they really wanna go to all that trouble for that then as long as they're having fun with it and it doesn't destroy the game (and with as many hoops to jump through to get this stuff as there are, the DM has a fair bit of control over the situation) then I think things are going okay.

Arcanist
2016-03-08, 07:14 PM
When crafting anything out of soul stone, soul mortar, and/or soul metal there is a 1 in 1000 chance of the substance(s) surviving the crafting process. If it fails then the substance is undone and is deleted.

I am going to "try" and craft the substance into a giant full scale replica of the DM's ego, fail and then go on with my life because the substance is now gone. Off to go fight the BBEG at the bottom of this Hellscape!

Altrunchen
2016-03-08, 08:11 PM
I am going to "try" and craft the substance into a giant full scale replica of the DM's ego, fail and then go on with my life because the substance is now gone. Off to go fight the BBEG at the bottom of this Hellscape!

http://rs2ci.memecdn.com/747/3883747.jpg

Oh no...they're on to me.

Arcanist
2016-03-08, 08:23 PM
But seriously, this approach actually works because you don't need tools to craft anything since working without tools is just a -2 penalty to the craft check (which helps, because the goal is failure) :smalltongue:

Maybe make it so that it only becomes unusable and not just vanish?

Zale
2016-03-09, 02:42 PM
You should add a d20 roll when interacting with Soul Stone or Soul Metal: On a one or higher, you set the player's character sheet is set on fire and then blow the ashes into their face.

Nyt
2016-03-09, 04:28 PM
I'm surprised no one pointed out that having an entire dungeon made out of this stuff effectively neuters a large number of character concepts- a character who's whole shtick is summoning? Nope! area-of-affect magic? No, if it touches the walls, it gets nixed immediately, so sorry Evoker, you're screwed. Wanna get some advice from home with a sending? too bad, you're locked in this anti-magic world.

It basically says, this metal is at once completely useless, because people can't craft the stuff into anything, but supremely useful because someone created a dungeon and you are in it.. why did you continue once you realized everything was completely immune to your magic? Well.. um.. Because plot?

Basically the only reason a group of adventurers would enter into this death trap, is that they are railroaded there. being unable to affect the environment doesn't make things difficult, it makes it frustrating. If the only thing your character can affect is the monster directly in front of him, it's just a tactical combat game, not an adventure.

I understand the idea behind this- force players to attempt new ways of dealing with a problem, right?

If so, that's not what this metal does- it just makes the spellcasters unable to do anything but blast direct damage that does not touch anything but their opponents. It makes the rogue's 1/day magic item that gives the group an escape route useless (portable hole), and just makes the place unresponsive to just about any creative use of any of the many published magic items.

If a DM wants to make a dungeon impregnable from both inside and out, all he has to do is say it is- no teleportation into or out of the dungeons for "reasons".

This doesn't inspire creative problem solving, it simply puts the "Because I said So" rule into effect- "You can't use magic on it, you can't hurt it, and you can't get through it because it's anti-magic at it's finest," works great for a prison cell, but not for an adventure premise.

Omnicrat
2016-03-10, 07:50 PM
This is, quite possibly, the worst piece of homebrew I have ever read. It is so bad it has inspired me to post after a long absence.

Where does this stuff even come from? How would it be mined? What kind of civilization would ever be able (hell, ever be willing to try) to use this stuff in any meaningful way?

Nothing about any of this makes sense. Its you trying to justify a No button to use on your players because they're more creative than you are and easily think their way around your campaigns.

Honestly, you're players are probably best off simply getting a new DM rather than play in a group under a DM who thinks this is a good idea.

EDIT: And now, I believe I realize, that this is supposed to be a parody of the types of DMs who do something like that. Well played.

Oh god, I hope this is a parody...

Arkhaic
2016-03-10, 09:15 PM
So.

If I were an (npc) deity that wanted to produce this, I would not do so on the prime material.

I would do it on an erratic time plane. Assuming I got the timing right, I would have 14400 days per real-world day.
The average rate is 19,230 years per gram. If I have a supply of pure ether, I could produce a gram in a little over a prime material year. It would still take a ludicrous amount of time, and I have a difficult time determining what I would need to spend millions of years (from my perception of time) to produce significant amounts of this stuff. There are simply so many more time-effective methods of protecting my things. Maybe if there was some lesser deity that could bypass all my protections. This is literally the least efficient method to protect my stuff ever.

Altrunchen
2016-03-11, 12:23 AM
You should add a d20 roll when interacting with Soul Stone or Soul Metal: On a one or higher, you set the player's character sheet is set on fire and then blow the ashes into their face.

You're saying what the others are basically saying in a beautifully succinct and even poetic manner. I can honestly visualize doing this and I'm kind of disturbed by the image each time I picture it. Well done sir.


I'm surprised no one pointed out that having an entire dungeon made out of this stuff effectively neuters a large number of character concepts- a character who's whole shtick is summoning? Nope! area-of-affect magic? No, if it touches the walls, it gets nixed immediately, so sorry Evoker, you're screwed. Wanna get some advice from home with a sending? too bad, you're locked in this anti-magic world.

It basically says, this metal is at once completely useless, because people can't craft the stuff into anything, but supremely useful because someone created a dungeon and you are in it.. why did you continue once you realized everything was completely immune to your magic? Well.. um.. Because plot?

Basically the only reason a group of adventurers would enter into this death trap, is that they are railroaded there. being unable to affect the environment doesn't make things difficult, it makes it frustrating. If the only thing your character can affect is the monster directly in front of him, it's just a tactical combat game, not an adventure.

I understand the idea behind this- force players to attempt new ways of dealing with a problem, right?

If so, that's not what this metal does- it just makes the spellcasters unable to do anything but blast direct damage that does not touch anything but their opponents. It makes the rogue's 1/day magic item that gives the group an escape route useless (portable hole), and just makes the place unresponsive to just about any creative use of any of the many published magic items.

If a DM wants to make a dungeon impregnable from both inside and out, all he has to do is say it is- no teleportation into or out of the dungeons for "reasons".

This doesn't inspire creative problem solving, it simply puts the "Because I said So" rule into effect- "You can't use magic on it, you can't hurt it, and you can't get through it because it's anti-magic at it's finest," works great for a prison cell, but not for an adventure premise.

It's an invention for the supremely lazy and a way to make something harder for cheap. Is it fair? No. Is it interesting? No. Should it be in a campaign? Probably not. Could someone out there find a use for it? Maybe.

I'm posting for the purposes of that maybe.

It's a gimmick really. And not one of my better ideas to say the least.

But judging from your reaction and the zero positive reactions of others, it seems like this would be ideal for a troll dungeon.


This is, quite possibly, the worst piece of homebrew I have ever read. It is so bad it has inspired me to post after a long absence.

Where does this stuff even come from? How would it be mined? What kind of civilization would ever be able (hell, ever be willing to try) to use this stuff in any meaningful way?

Nothing about any of this makes sense. Its you trying to justify a No button to use on your players because they're more creative than you are and easily think their way around your campaigns.

Honestly, you're players are probably best off simply getting a new DM rather than play in a group under a DM who thinks this is a good idea.

EDIT: And now, I believe I realize, that this is supposed to be a parody of the types of DMs who do something like that. Well played.

Oh god, I hope this is a parody...

How I wish I could tell you it was a parody.

But I will admit I'm amazed at the backlash to it, in fact I'm actually cracking up about it. So I guess you could say it was an unintentional parody.


So.

If I were an (npc) deity that wanted to produce this, I would not do so on the prime material.

I would do it on an erratic time plane. Assuming I got the timing right, I would have 14400 days per real-world day.
The average rate is 19,230 years per gram. If I have a supply of pure ether, I could produce a gram in a little over a prime material year. It would still take a ludicrous amount of time, and I have a difficult time determining what I would need to spend millions of years (from my perception of time) to produce significant amounts of this stuff. There are simply so many more time-effective methods of protecting my things. Maybe if there was some lesser deity that could bypass all my protections. This is literally the least efficient method to protect my stuff ever.

I'm actually really flattered that you put this much thought into it. And you're right, there are far better/faster ways of protecting things. But I feel like this option might appeal to some people out there.


It's amazing how negative the response to all this is actually. I'm actually kind of laughing to and at myself about all this. But let me explain where it comes from:

It was an AD&D 2e epic level meat-grinder campaign that I was DMing. I had recently finished running the Tomb of Horrors in 3.5e and wanted to try making my own meat-grinder dungeon. So I got some buddies of mine who frequented AD&D 2e and we worked it out bit by bit.

All the players knew that they were going into a deathtrap with epic level characters. This dungeon had stuff like magnetic traps that hold a character in armor to the floor as the ceiling falls on them. A room full of over-leveled undead. Mirrors that spawn infinite amounts of monsters. A hydra that spawns new heads at an accelerated rate. And all kinds of things to torment characters with. Even traps that when activated teleport someone naked beneath a fake floor with all their equipment elsewhere. What's worse is that there was a fake objective: a portal beyond a boss fight that would look like it was activated but instead (if not properly calibrated in insanely hidden rooms with obscure means of doing so) would transport PCs to certain death. Oh! And this place even had a monster that could cast mage's disjunction (or an equivalent for 2e) as a spell-like ability. I even threw a beholder at them on a whim just to see how they'd react. Fun stuff!

I made this to contain and to try and take-down epic level characters. It's made for a meat-grinder campaign. It's a gimmick.

The wonderful thing is, that the players survived the dungeon. And they did it with style too. I was really happy that they enjoyed the experience and even though this idea might be pretty lame and silly. I've actually found it worked in at least once instance. So do with that what you will.

I personally think that because it worked for at least one campaign that it means that things aren't as hopeless as they may seem if players encounter this stuff.

Omnicrat
2016-03-11, 04:30 AM
This makes so much more sense now. As a specific thing, designed for a specific reason, in a camping full of equally unfair and horrible things, in which the players knew and wanted that going in, this is interesting fine.

Still, though, assuming your Greater Deity who built this didn't use time trait shenanigans, what inspired them to put in the time and effort in the first place?

Altrunchen
2016-03-11, 04:31 PM
This makes so much more sense now. As a specific thing, designed for a specific reason, in a camping full of equally unfair and horrible things, in which the players knew and wanted that going in, this is interesting fine.

Still, though, assuming your Greater Deity who built this didn't use time trait shenanigans, what inspired them to put in the time and effort in the first place?

Oh it wasn't a greater deity, it was my own homebrew thing that was beyond that. A being that does not require faith for power. But that's another post. Suffice it to say that the individual who made it was like a transcendant wizard (that's my adjective for these things) named Ratapatavatamanadamfar. My version of Mordenkainen or Elminster except more powerful than a deity and sort of bizarre and whimsical.

The point of this facility was to make reaching a certain plane for outsiders to be REALLY REALLY REAAAAAAAAAAALLY hard and downright dangerous to do. The whole facility was a bunker/bottleneck to discourage demons/devils and any other kind of outsider from going there. This is because even plane shifting there was hard and really inconvenient. The plane was kind of on the outskirts and in a manner of speaking a backwater realm. And as such most outsiders and even deities weren't interested in what happened there. This gate was supposed to discourage them even more because the portal inside was the fastest and easiest means to get there, if you could survive getting to the actual portal.

Soul Metal and Soul Stone are meant to keep entire armies and even some kinds of deities out. You use it when you want to guard against the absurdly powerful.

Omnicrat
2016-03-12, 10:58 PM
What was actually in that plane that was so dangerous?

Altrunchen
2016-03-22, 08:54 PM
What was actually in that plane that was so dangerous?

It wasn't what was in the plane that was dangerous, it was what was beside that plane. The plane this gate protected was the closest material plane to the void. Where reality is no more, where nothing can be known, where things beyond comprehension of anything in the planes sometimes come from. A place where the dreaded Mr. Happy came from. This plane was on the border of this void and would be an ideal foothold for whatever comes from beyond existence itself.

Also it was to keep the affairs of outsiders out of the plane so the people inside of it wouldn't be caught up in what Ratapatavatamanadamfar deems to be "silly and petulant" wars. As such there exists the ability to be secular in that plane and for those who die without a deity to not be in danger of being consumed by that snake at the bottom of hell (or was it the abyss? I forget because I actually don't care enough about planescape to REALLY research it ;p ). The plane is just so annoying to reach for outsiders, most don't bother with it anyways. It's like a nuclear plant (the void) existing miles and miles out from a city (the planes) with a small town just next door to it (this plane). If that makes sense?

VoodooPaladin
2016-03-22, 10:56 PM
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I feel the appropriate response to any secure location made of this material is to blockade all the exits and call it a tomb.

Altrunchen
2016-03-23, 05:08 PM
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I feel the appropriate response to any secure location made of this material is to blockade all the exits and call it a tomb.

Interesting. Why do you say that exactly?

Jormengand
2016-03-23, 05:34 PM
Interesting. Why do you say that exactly?

Because anyone in a fort made of the stuff isn't getting out without an endless supply of uberchargers. Even Soul-Mortar requires a massive damage output (your typical spirited charge lancer with rage isn't gonna cut it. A spirited charge headlong rush lance-uberdiver who power attacks for full might actually stand a chance at breaking through stone, and could definitely smash up the mortar). If you block off the entrances, especially with more soul substances, anyone inside is going to die.

Of course, the obvious way to bypass the fortress is to use psionics (c'mon, if your DM's that guy he'll have turned psi-mag transparency off).

Grand Arbiter
2016-03-23, 05:41 PM
How would these materials react to a sphere of annihilation?

Jormengand
2016-03-23, 06:01 PM
How would these materials react to a sphere of annihilation?

Apparently? Ignore it. Or perhaps disjoin it; we're not sure.

Altrunchen
2016-03-23, 08:54 PM
Because anyone in a fort made of the stuff isn't getting out without an endless supply of uberchargers. Even Soul-Mortar requires a massive damage output (your typical spirited charge lancer with rage isn't gonna cut it. A spirited charge headlong rush lance-uberdiver who power attacks for full might actually stand a chance at breaking through stone, and could definitely smash up the mortar). If you block off the entrances, especially with more soul substances, anyone inside is going to die.

Of course, the obvious way to bypass the fortress is to use psionics (c'mon, if your DM's that guy he'll have turned psi-mag transparency off).

I mentioned in the description that psionics wouldn't work on these substances but I guess I wasn't that clear. As far as I'm concerned magic and psionics are basically the same thing regardless of semantics so I intended for neither to be able to work on the substances. I guess I'll just have to edit it to clarify things. Thanks for pointing it out though.

And I hadn't thought of that definition of a tomb before, but I guess it makes sense.


How would these materials react to a sphere of annihilation?
Don't those require magic to work and/or to exist? If so then it wouldn't do anything. If not, then I'm not sure.

If the sphere is entirely magical and has no physical form of its own independent of magic, then it would be like an ethereal creature passing into it. The sphere (assuming it's entirely magical and no part of it is physical) would phase into the substance and be undone.


Apparently? Ignore it. Or perhaps disjoin it; we're not sure.
If a DM lets their party have control of one of those things, you know some havoc is about to be wrought.

noob
2016-03-24, 01:35 AM
And how they do against voidstones(they are not magical)

AtlasSniperman
2016-03-24, 08:16 AM
If we were speaking entirely scientifically yes. But this is a world of magic and whatnot so I need only chalk it up to magic to explain that away. How broken is that?. .
Ummm, no-ones noticed the hypocracy?
This perfectly antimagic stuff would create huge issue with physics? Easy; magic fixes it.......

Altrunchen
2016-03-24, 12:07 PM
Ummm, no-ones noticed the hypocracy?
This perfectly antimagic stuff would create huge issue with physics? Easy; magic fixes it.......

I don't know how hypocritical it is exactly.

But in a game with magic, deities, demons, curses, and more magic I think magic can help plug in a lot of holes. Honestly though, I'm kind of satirizing how easy magic explains away things with that comment. It was kind of in jest. Kind of.


And how they do against voidstones(they are not magical)

Hmm this is a good question. Well let's see.

This substance is supposed to be from another plane (the negative energy plane if I'm not mistaken). Doesn't this plane rely on magic to exist? If that is true then perhaps it stands to reason that this substance would be inherantly magical itself.

You say that it is not magical but if that is true then how exactly does it destroy everything it comes into contact with? So for right now let's assume that it is magical, because if not then the answer is obvious.

Voidstone reminds me of antimatter vaguely except that it isn't undone by interacting with ordinary matter. So I think it stands to reason to assume that it is not antimatter (at least to my understanding).

" Any material touching it, other than another voidstone, was quickly destroyed in a matter of seconds—a being with great fortitude might have lasted a little longer."

The basic premise of this substance is that if something touches it that is not voidstone, that it is destroyed. And the basic premise of soul-materials is that magic has no effect on them.

However, voidstone seems to be a canon substance. Whereas Soul materials are not. Therefore, a situation where they came into contact has yet to be documented. And the result of such a situation would be up to the DM to decide.

It all comes down to this matter: if voidstones are magical given their place of origin, then they would have no effect on soul materials. If voidstones really aren't magical then they would destroy soul materials.

At the end of the day, it comes down to what the DM says.

But given the information I've read about them here: http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Voidstone, I think I might classify them as magical. My argument is that because they originate from a plane that is not the prime material plane they are a magical material instead of a mundane material.

But I could understand an argument saying that voidstone would destroy soul stone.

Honestly, it seems that they are both super rare.

noob
2016-03-24, 01:10 PM
Negative energy is something not magical it is just that you encounter it out of the plane of negative energy only through creature making it magically.
It is like saying fire is magical because most of the thing that burns you use magical fire(this is why some people forget iron golems take damage from regular fire if it deals enough damage to bypass DR) and that it is also present on an elemental plane just like negative energy.
Fire in the fire plane is never said to be magical so I think that it is the same thing for negative energy.
So I see no reason why voidstones would be magical.
So there will be gm houseruling in both ways.
So there must be a text for the ones who thinks it is not magical.

Altrunchen
2016-03-24, 01:16 PM
Negative energy is something not magical it is just that you encounter it out of the plane of negative energy only through creature making it magically.
It is like saying fire is magical because most of the thing that burns you use magical fire(this is why some people forget iron golems take damage from regular fire if it deals enough damage to bypass DR) and that it is also present on an elemental plane just like negative energy.
Fire in the fire plane is never said to be magical so I think that it is the same thing for negative energy.
So I see no reason why voidstones would be magical.

Yeah but doesn't magic encompass things that do not exist in real life in the context of this game? Or at least with things from the planes? In fact, doesn't it exist because of the planes themselves? I'm not really up on the official lore to be honest so please correct me if I'm wrong.

And whether or not one of is wrong or right, it still comes down to what the DM says.

Edit: I was thinking of your fire plane example. So then, if it's normal fire then what is the fuel? Where is the oxygen coming from? And where is all the exhaust going? I think magic gets involved somewhere in there.

noob
2016-03-24, 01:23 PM
Negative energy is something not magical it is just that you encounter it out of the plane of negative energy only through creature making it magically.
It is like saying fire is magical because most of the thing that burns you use magical fire(this is why some people forget iron golems take damage from regular fire if it deals enough damage to bypass DR) and that it is also present on an elemental plane just like negative energy.
Fire in the fire plane is never said to be magical so I think that it is the same thing for negative energy.
So I see no reason why voidstones would be magical.
So there will be gm houseruling in both ways.
So there must be a text for the ones who thinks it is not magical.
Self quoting because I added two things.
Since gms can houserule both ways you need to make your rocks resistant to it unless you only want it to be usable by gms having the same vision as you.

Altrunchen
2016-03-24, 01:25 PM
self quoting because I added two things.

I modified that statement with the very next sentence saying that at the very least with the planes.

noob
2016-03-24, 01:26 PM
Quoting the part you still did not answered:


Since gms can houserule both ways you need to make your rocks resistant to it unless you only want it to be usable by gms having the same vision as you.

Altrunchen
2016-03-24, 01:27 PM
Quoting the part you still did not answered:

Well I didn't answer it because we're both kind of editing our posts a bit much.

And you may be right, I guess I'll throw that in there. Thanks for pointing this out.

Grand Arbiter
2016-03-24, 03:12 PM
I did some research...
Control related text omitted.

...
Should a gate spell be cast upon a sphere of annihilation, there is a 50% chance (01-50 on d%) that the spell destroys it, a 35% chance (51-85) that the spell does nothing, and a 15% chance (86-100) that a gap is torn in the spatial fabric, catapulting everything within a 180-foot radius into another plane. If a rod of cancellation touches a sphere of annihilation, they negate each other in a tremendous explosion. Everything within a 60-foot radius takes 2d6×10 points of damage. Dispel magic and mage's disjunction have no effect on a sphere.
...
Strong transmutation; CL 20th.Would not have guessed it was magic, much less that it bore an aura of transmutation.

Since dispelling/disjoining have no effect, and gate does not apply, would the rod of cancellation effect come into play? Nothing says " indestructible " like making a sphere of annihilation explode.

Another question that this prompted however; would a rift/gate/etc. that did not need magic to function, but only to be made, be able to affect this material? (Such as is created when a portable hole and bag of holding are messed around with.)

nikkoli
2016-03-24, 05:56 PM
On the interaction between void stones and soul materials there is also a good bit of minerals mined from the plane of earth, especially adamantine, so I have been informed by my pal when we were talking about adamantine about the door mentioned earlier in this thread. Anyway would an adamantine weapon made from adamantine from the plane of earth just stop existing after hitting the wall?

Altrunchen
2016-03-24, 06:36 PM
I did some research...
Control related text omitted.
Would not have guessed it was magic, much less that it bore an aura of transmutation.

Since dispelling/disjoining have no effect, and gate does not apply, would the rod of cancellation effect come into play? Nothing says " indestructible " like making a sphere of annihilation explode.

Another question that this prompted however; would a rift/gate/etc. that did not need magic to function, but only to be made, be able to affect this material? (Such as is created when a portable hole and bag of holding are messed around with.)

It really depends to be honest. Is the gate being made within an enclosure of these materials? If so then no they wouldn't even form in the first place. If the gate or rift is attempting to be made on one of these substances, then it would be like a rune. The drawing would still be there, but the magic wouldn't take hold.

As far as a portable hole or a bag of holding. I hadn't thought of that to be honest. Given the policy of these substances preventing teleportation and plane-shifting then I guess it would mean that those wouldn't function in an enclosure made of soul materials.

Of course any DM can just house-rule this stuff as much as they want.


On the interaction between void stones and soul materials there is also a good bit of minerals mined from the plane of earth, especially adamantine, so I have been informed by my pal when we were talking about adamantine about the door mentioned earlier in this thread. Anyway would an adamantine weapon made from adamantine from the plane of earth just stop existing after hitting the wall?

Well the big question I was asking was whether or not voidstone can exist without magic. I guess another way of putting it is, if you put one in an anti-magic field, would it still work? In the case of adamantine, since there's something physical there and it keeps existing even in an anti-magic field, it would come into contact with the substances and not be undone. But the magical effects of the substance (if any) would have no effect on the soul materials.

So no it would not.