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View Full Version : What happens if you put a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the ocean?



Aquillion
2007-10-28, 01:44 AM
As far as I can tell, it would eventually drain all the oceans in the world. But I'm curious if anyone has any other interpretations.

VerdugoExplode
2007-10-28, 02:11 AM
I think you're pretty much spot on.
Endless black hole + all the worlds water = bad times, or dark sun, take your pick.

kpenguin
2007-10-28, 02:12 AM
Um... doesn' that mean that a sphere of annihilation destroys all the air around it?

Sphere of annihilation anywhere near anything = apocalypse

Dausuul
2007-10-28, 02:14 AM
As far as I can tell, it would eventually drain all the oceans in the world. But I'm curious if anyone has any other interpretations.

Eventually being the key word. I don't know exactly how long this would take, but a sphere of annihilation isn't all that big. It would almost certainly need tens of thousands of years, if not more, to drain the ocean to any appreciable degree.

(Actually, it wouldn't drain all the oceans; it would only drain them until the water level dropped below the part of the seabed where it was resting. Then, as KPenguin says, it would start on the air.)

kpenguin
2007-10-28, 02:28 AM
Wouldn't also start to eat up the seabed?

Leave it to WotC to classify a miniature black hole as a minor artifact.

Ulzgoroth
2007-10-28, 02:37 AM
It's not a black hole...it doesn't actually draw anything into it. Just destroy what touches it. That would make air suck in towards it in effect, and water even more so, but doesn't chew up large portions of solid real estate directly.

kpenguin
2007-10-28, 02:46 AM
Wouldn't the vacuum it creates cause things to suck in towards it?

Rad
2007-10-28, 02:48 AM
Leave it to WotC to classify a miniature black hole as a minor artifact.
I mourn the times when Blackballs used to be monsters :smallsigh:

Zincorium
2007-10-28, 02:59 AM
I've always felt that the sphere of annihilation is the multiverse's answer to decanters of endless water and the create water spell (I've never seen anyone use the reverse in an actual game). There are probably enough abandoned decanters of endless water (seeing as they are regular magic items, not artifacts) to continue filling any water sucked in by the sphere of annihilation.

As far as the suction, it would theoretically either suck up the entire ocean all at once or only suck up the incredibly thin layer of water that is actually touching it's boundry, and the low pressure would probably end up boiling the water around it into water vapor, which is itself sucked up. Er, sorry catgirls.

Ulzgoroth
2007-10-28, 03:07 AM
Wouldn't the vacuum it creates cause things to suck in towards it?
It will suck in air. Only air (or water, or whatever is directly in contact with it). The currents of air or water might lift some other material, but not all that strongly.

From a random website on spacecraft decompression, I get an estimated 200 m/s draft at the (1 foot radius) surface of the sphere. But that drops off as the square of distance from the center, so at ten feet it's down to 2 m/s, merely a 'fresh breeze'. That's in air, I'm not trying water.

I mourn the times when Blackballs used to be monsters :smallsigh:
Isn't there something like that in the ELH?

The_Snark
2007-10-28, 03:18 AM
I mourn the times when Blackballs used to be monsters :smallsigh:

They still are (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/umbralBlot.htm).

And they have an answer to the OP's quandary; the blackball somehow insulates itself from the air, preventing it from constantly sucking in air or water. Unless it wants to.

The actual sphere doesn't specify the same thing, but I suspect the creators meant it that way.

Suzuro
2007-10-28, 03:49 AM
But think, if it were at the bottom of the ocean, it would actually go at a somewhat decent rate due to it instantly eliminating the water and more water taking it's place, causing a never-ending cycle.

warmachine
2007-10-28, 04:48 AM
The ubergod of the world, i.e. the DM, creates a ruling that it does not affect anything considered part of the pervasive, supporting medium that's part of the environment. This includes the atmosphere and the oceans but not buckets of water thrown at it nor smoke. This is nonsense, of course, but AD&D physics is routinely thrown out for the benefit of the game.

Mike_Lemmer
2007-10-28, 05:19 AM
My solution?

An ocean deity is notified of this threat to his domain. He sets up a barrier around the sphere that moves with it & blocks all water & air from entering. Problem solved.

Kompera
2007-10-28, 06:35 AM
As far as I can tell, it would eventually drain all the oceans in the world. But I'm curious if anyone has any other interpretations.

Other interpretation: Don't try to enforce real-world physics upon a fantasy realm. And no, you don't have to try to explain it if your players pose the question. Just smile and tell them to try to figure it out for themselves.

bosssmiley
2007-10-28, 06:44 AM
They still are (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/umbralBlot.htm).

It's Kirby gone gone horribly, horribly wrong! :smallbiggrin:

As for the blackball chugging the ocean. I'm sure the Powers That Be would just open up another portal to the plane of water to balance the inflow-outflow rate and then sit back nodding sagely at the interesting (ie: plot hook worthy) shifts in planetary tides, currents, weather patterns and such.

Attilargh
2007-10-28, 06:48 AM
My friend once told me how his adventuring party once found a sphere of annihilation, and ended up plunging it into the ocean. He also told me a story of another game where the heroes dove into a mysterious whirlpool and were never seen again.

Citizen Joe
2007-10-28, 09:56 AM
While fun in a theoretical sense, you would have to figure HOW to get it down there in the first place. It move VERY slowly through intense will. Once you get out to the middle of the ocean, which can be difficult due to the slow rate of travel and the likelihood of the sphere hitting something vital. Then you have to push it down. That either takes decades because you keep waiting for the water level to drop to the maximum range, or you go into the water with it (waterbreathing) and force it all the way down. Again this takes a long time and/or dangerous because of:
a) Dangerous animal life in sea
b) Extreme crushing pressure on you at depths
c) IF the sphere does draw in water (the only way for it to actually drain the sea) then it would suck you into from the currents.

Assuming you somehow make it to the bottom of the sea, currents would start to drag stuff to the sphere. Eventually, it would get covered up by debris that spans it without touching it. Then more debris would collect, eventually a hard dense covering would surround the sphere preventing its draining effects. Just like clogging a vacuum hose.

RandomNPC
2007-10-28, 10:10 AM
i like how everyone breezes over the part in the discription about how a gentle breeze can be felt when very close to its surface.

in my mind that means it destroys gases slowly, and finding this breeze means its already to late.

i'd make the DM call that it does the same with any fluids, slowly destroying them, not turning into some catistrophic ten mile deep whirlpool.

also, if you could make your saves, could you dimension door it?

anywho, to the OP.

in my game it would slowly drain the oceans to the level of the bottom of the sphere. Imagine filling a bathtub up and pulling the drain, it only takes a minuet or so to get rid of all that water. now fill it back up and put a pinhole in the drain. Doing this would take hours, maybe even a few days depending on tub size, to drain the tub. so the sphere in my game, when submerged, would act more like the pinhole.


EDIT: Isn't there a sponge somewhere that sucks up water? from what i remember it floats, but causes something crazy, like a twenty foot deep whirlpool or something and can destroy 150 gallons/round. I think. It also deals loads of damage to water elementals, and when squeezed realeases only a small amount of water before becoming to dry to squeze any more out of. because i was totally going to make one BBEG a merfolk hater looking for one of those.

bugsysservant
2007-10-28, 10:14 AM
While fun in a theoretical sense, you would have to figure HOW to get it down there in the first place. It move VERY slowly through intense will. Once you get out to the middle of the ocean, which can be difficult due to the slow rate of travel and the likelihood of the sphere hitting something vital. Then you have to push it down. That either takes decades because you keep waiting for the water level to drop to the maximum range, or you go into the water with it (waterbreathing) and force it all the way down. Again this takes a long time and/or dangerous because of:
a) Dangerous animal life in sea
b) Extreme crushing pressure on you at depths
c) IF the sphere does draw in water (the only way for it to actually drain the sea) then it would suck you into from the currents.

Assuming you somehow make it to the bottom of the sea, currents would start to drag stuff to the sphere. Eventually, it would get covered up by debris that spans it without touching it. Then more debris would collect, eventually a hard dense covering would surround the sphere preventing its draining effects. Just like clogging a vacuum hose.

Two words: telekinetic sphere. A wizard 19/cleric 1 can just use DMM to persist the spell and keep himself well away from the sphere as he mentally forces it down.

But a better question (IMHO) would be if Spheres have mass. Because if they do, then why haven't they all sunk to the middle of the earth? And if they don't have mass, why do they "stick" to the surface of the earth?

Mewtarthio
2007-10-28, 10:30 AM
Two words: telekinetic sphere. A wizard 19/cleric 1 can just use DMM to persist the spell and keep himself well away from the sphere as he mentally forces it down.

Wouldn't the sphere just destroy the effect?


But a better question (IMHO) would be if Spheres have mass. Because if they do, then why haven't they all sunk to the middle of the earth? And if they don't have mass, why do they "stick" to the surface of the earth?

Two possibilities:

1) What is this "inertial reference frame" of which you speak? Everyone knows that all movement is relative to the aether, and the Sphere remains stationary with respect to that.

2) By mantaining concentration on the sphere, you eventually get it to constantly move in your reference frame. This takes too long to be of any use to most people, but the combined psychic energies of an entire planet are enough to fix the sphere in place.

Dervag
2007-10-28, 11:11 AM
Wouldn't the vacuum it creates cause things to suck in towards it?Sort of, but if we treat air as being made out of molecules, all that really happens is that any molecules striking the surface of the sphere just disappear. On the molecular level, the effect isn't pronounced, although you'd feel a breeze near the hole. It's possible to calculate how long it would take for a sphere of annihilation to eat an atmosphere or an ocean using the techniques of thermal physics.

One way around the problem is to posit 'Spheres of Creation' or 'white holes' that bring new matter into being to replace the matter destroyed by the Spheres of Annihilation.


Other interpretation: Don't try to enforce real-world physics upon a fantasy realm. And no, you don't have to try to explain it if your players pose the question. Just smile and tell them to try to figure it out for themselves.I've always found that solution a shade tyrannical. I prefer to make a set of assumptions such as "assume that there are Spheres of Annihilation" and then come up with an explanation that allows the world to behave normally despite those assumptions such as the presence of endless Decanters of Water (and possibly an endless Mill of Salt) at the bottom of the sea.

The nice thing about this is that you can figure out a lot about how the world should be different from Earth in the details (for instance, someone can doom the oceans by removing the Decanters or trigger a gradual sea level rise by removing the Spheres) this way. It's a source of plot hooks.

On a smaller scale, you can do the same thing with villages or kingdoms: "How does this monster/NPC survive in this environment?"
"They must have !"

"Why does this kingdom have an army instead of a crack force of mercenaries with character levels?"
"Because the army is more cost effective at countering [insert threat here]!"

OR

"The nation's senior noble houses have enough accumulated magical treasures that they [i]do wield the power of a large force of medium to high-level characters; they just don't do so except in times of national emergency!"

bugsysservant
2007-10-28, 11:59 AM
Wouldn't the sphere just destroy the effect?

No, I meant you get in the sphere, and use it as a telekinetic submarine. You then mentally direct yourself downward while simultaneously directing the sphere.

boomwolf
2007-10-28, 12:12 PM
Actually, it will destroy the planet if it is a "normal" one (a ball shaped with a gravity center)

It will eat his way into the core of the planet, and the gravity will draw everything towards the orb.

thereaper
2007-10-28, 12:18 PM
Other interpretation: Don't try to enforce real-world physics upon a fantasy realm. And no, you don't have to try to explain it if your players pose the question. Just smile and tell them to try to figure it out for themselves.

Well, the thing is, if you don't do that, you don't have a frame of reference and therefore have no way of speculating the physics of the world. Any and all worlds that we humans have imagined are all based on the physics of our universe, because it's all we know. From there, we make little tweaks and changes to those rules. But it doesn't change the fact that the rules of our own universe are the base. Therefore, we can use them to make assumptions about the physics of D&D. It merely requires us to change a few things (such as adding magic). The problem using all of this to find a sufficient explanation for certain phenomena (much like in the real world, actually).

But I do agree that it's not necessary (usually) to explain the "how" to the players. If they really care about it, they'll come up with an explanation on their own.

And if that doesn't work, there's always the "A Wizard did it", explanation. :smallwink:


Two words: telekinetic sphere. A wizard 19/cleric 1 can just use DMM to persist the spell and keep himself well away from the sphere as he mentally forces it down.

But a better question (IMHO) would be if Spheres have mass. Because if they do, then why haven't they all sunk to the middle of the earth? And if they don't have mass, why do they "stick" to the surface of the earth?

Based on what I'm reading from the SRD, one doesn't have to use telekinesis to move it. Anyone can move it using their own will (as if they had telekinesis) because the sphere is weightless (which means it is also massless), as long as they make a Control Sphere check. If they fail, however, the sphere moves towards them.

But as long as the sphere is in the same relative inertial frame of reference, it won't move or sink or anything. Newton's 1st law: Objects tend to keep doing whatever they were doing unless something else interferes. Since a sphere of annihilation is, well, nothing, it isn't affected by physical forces.

The sphere could potentially resist the pull of gravity by either some magic effect that is a part of it or through the fact that it is not technically anything and would therefore not be affected by the curvature of space caused by matter (or gravitrons, if you want a strictly quantum-mechanical explanation).

Now, I have two theories as to why the sphere of annihilation would not suck up everything on Earth like a black hole.

1) The Gods are intervening to only let it suck up certain things. This is supported on the SRD by the statement that only a God's intervention can bring back an annihilated character.

2) Spheres of Annihilation have natural "safety measures" installed in them that prevent them from sucking in certain things (or take certain circumstances into account when "deciding" whether to suck something in or not). There are precedents for this sort of conditional behavior to be seen in spells like Protection From Arrows (which functions as a magical barrier that somehow distinguishes between projectiles and non-projectiles and only stops the projectiles).

Of course, either explanation means that it would become possible for objects to affect it physically. This could be explained away by either having the sphere somehow automatically "move" an equal distance back after being struck by an object and then stop (which would result in the object bouncing off the sphere without the sphere actually moving) or by having objects that come into contact with the sphere without being sucked in automatically be teleported to the other side.

In any case, there has to be something keeping the sphere from sucking in air and water and such, because otherwise the sphere would indeed suck away the entire atmosphere of Earth and perhaps the planet itself.

GoC
2007-10-28, 01:08 PM
Sort of, but if we treat air as being made out of molecules, all that really happens is that any molecules striking the surface of the sphere just disappear. On the molecular level, the effect isn't pronounced, although you'd feel a breeze near the hole.

Air molecules move very fast (speed of sound? something like that). So without other molecules stopping them the air a millimeter thick around the sphere is moving about 300m/s.
Using this assumation and some simplifications I calculated that the sphere is detroying 300 cubic meters of air per second.
As this gives a breeze of 3m/s at 10 ft compared to Ulzgoroth's 2m/s the actual amount of air destroyed will probably be between 100m^3/s and 300m^3/s.
In 200 years a single sphere will destroy a 10km cube of air.

Water on the other hand is almost impossible to model.

Callos_DeTerran
2007-10-28, 01:26 PM
What happens if you put a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the ocean?

...The Greatest Plot Hook EVUH!



Also, the world with endless decanters of waters balancing out the sphere's of annihilation at the bottom of the ocean is awesome in an of itself!

Mewtarthio
2007-10-28, 02:40 PM
Air molecules move very fast (speed of sound? something like that). So without other molecules stopping them the air a millimeter thick around the sphere is moving about 300m/s.

What's an "air molecule"? Is that some weird new elemental in some obscure splatbook? :smallamused:

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-28, 02:49 PM
What's an "air molecule"? Is that some weird new elemental in some obscure splatbook? :smallamused:

:smallfurious:

For gods' sake, D&D worlds run on real physics unless they say otherwise! Where have you ever read that there's no such things as molecules in a D&D book? Nowhere? Right!

monty
2007-10-28, 03:19 PM
The DM, who has divine rank G (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number), sees this potential destruction and rewrites the laws of physics so that it doesn't work that way.

All major issues in a campaign can be solved this way. It works because the DM says so.

martyboy74
2007-10-28, 03:24 PM
:smallfurious:

For gods' sake, D&D worlds run on real physics unless they say otherwise! Where have you ever read that there's no such things as molecules in a D&D book? Nowhere? Right!

What happened to the god of joy? :smalleek:

Josh the Aspie
2007-10-28, 03:28 PM
But as long as the sphere is in the same relative inertial frame of reference, it won't move or sink or anything. Newton's 1st law: Objects tend to keep doing whatever they were doing unless something else interferes. Since a sphere of annihilation is, well, nothing, it isn't affected by physical forces.

The sphere could potentially resist the pull of gravity by either some magic effect that is a part of it or through the fact that it is not technically anything and would therefore not be affected by the curvature of space caused by matter (or gravitrons, if you want a strictly quantum-mechanical explanation).


Pardon me, but I do believe there is something you are neglecting here.

First of all, an object in motion tends to stay in motion, with the same velocity (speed in a particular direction) unless an outside force acts to change this. This is impulse = change in momentum.

This means that without gravity (outside force providing said impulse), the sphere would continue on a strait line, With no effect of gravity being balanced by the normal force (something below the sphere, supporting it) upon the sphere, this means that the sphere would fly off into space.

In other words, without a centripetal force (a force directed towards the axis of rotation), objects tend to fly off into the distance, as happens when you swing a base ball around your head on a string, and then suddenly let go. You have removed the centripetal force, and so are no longer constantly altering the momentum of the base ball. Without this constant alteration, the base ball continues to travel in a line, which is then effected only by gravity causing it to fall earthwards.

StickMan
2007-10-28, 03:31 PM
I think I would rule that the spear only destroys solid matter as a DM other wise no more oceans. But thats just me.

SilveryCord
2007-10-28, 04:16 PM
:smallfurious:

For gods' sake, D&D worlds run on real physics unless they say otherwise! Where have you ever read that there's no such things as molecules in a D&D book? Nowhere? Right!

Where does it say that it runs on real physics? Using real world physics just introduces too many questions to be a feasible way of looking at DnD. This world has Portable Holes and Endless Decanters and wizards who can cast spells and rogues who can crawl through holes in a barrier made out of pure force. Physics shouldn't apply unless otherwise stated.

Ulzgoroth
2007-10-28, 04:21 PM
Ok, then. I'm going to bounce a brick like a superball.

Why not? The rules don't say anything about it...

monty
2007-10-28, 04:26 PM
Where does it say that it runs on real physics? Using real world physics just introduces too many questions to be a feasible way of looking at DnD. This world has Portable Holes and Endless Decanters and wizards who can cast spells and rogues who can crawl through holes in a barrier made out of pure force. Physics shouldn't apply unless otherwise stated.

All of the physics-defying things in D&D have one thing in common: A wizard did it (or a sorcerer or some other magic-user, depending on the situation). The non-magical aspects all follow standard physics, though.

SilveryCord
2007-10-28, 04:43 PM
All of the physics-defying things in D&D have one thing in common: A wizard did it (or a sorcerer or some other magic-user, depending on the situation). The non-magical aspects all follow standard physics, though.

But to what extent? There's no precendent to jump from "Uhhh gravity is the same" to "Atomic physics."

Look at falling damage. Would you care to explain that one to me with a little bit of Newton?

Edea
2007-10-28, 04:47 PM
What happens if you put a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the ocean?

Firstly, It would be there for about .0002 seconds before another powerful entity or divine being came along and confiscated it. People, these things are freaking powerful; noone is going to leave them just lying around, not even the most epic of archmages (those crazies likely animating them into umbral blots, or 'blackballs' as someone earlier put it).

Secondly, y'know, there are probably portals to the infinite planes of Elemental Air and Water at the top of the Prime Material's atmospheric layer and at the bottom of the Prime Material's sea beds (respectively), pumping out vast quantities of water, oxygen, elementals, and gods know what else.

Thirdly, if it was that big of a threat, someone would send an 'expendable resource' down there and have it thrust a rod of cancellation into the artifact, ending its existence permanently.

Jack_Simth
2007-10-28, 04:52 PM
But to what extent? There's no precendent to jump from "Uhhh gravity is the same" to "Atomic physics."

Look at falling damage. Would you care to explain that one to me with a little bit of Newton?

Sure. HP (and with it, damage) is an abstraction; the damage is based primarily on impact energy, which is linear with height (Potential Energy = Mass * Gravity * Height) up until you hit terminal velocity (the point at which the force from wind resistance exactly counters the force from gravitational acceleration). Sure, it's been simplified in the rules so that it's not overly complex (wind resistance is a function of speed, surface area, weight, and some other stuff) but it remains a surprisingly reasonable approximation.

monty
2007-10-28, 04:56 PM
But to what extent? There's no precendent to jump from "Uhhh gravity is the same" to "Atomic physics."

Look at falling damage. Would you care to explain that one to me with a little bit of Newton?

When you fall, you get hurt. How is that different from real life?

bugsysservant
2007-10-28, 04:57 PM
Based on what I'm reading from the SRD, one doesn't have to use telekinesis to move it. Anyone can move it using their own will (as if they had telekinesis) because the sphere is weightless (which means it is also massless), as long as they make a Control Sphere check. If they fail, however, the sphere moves towards them.

GAHHH!!! (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html) I wasn't talking about using telekinesis to move the sphere. There is a spell called Telekinetic Sphere (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/telekineticSphere.htm). I was merely pointing out that you could use that spell to reach the bottom of the ocean, circumventing a number of problems raised by another poster.


The DM, who has divine rank G (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number), sees this potential destruction and rewrites the laws of physics so that it doesn't work that way.

All major issues in a campaign can be solved this way. It works because the DM says so.
Actually, I believe you have to define Graham's Number by Ackerman's function in order to determing the Divine Rank of the DM. :smallsmile: (A cookie if you can name the reference)

monty
2007-10-28, 05:02 PM
Actually, I believe you have to define Graham's Number by Ackerman's function in order to determing the Divine Rank of the DM. :smallsmile: (A cookie if you can name the reference)

I saw it in this comic (http://xkcd.com/207/). Is that what you were thinking of?

bugsysservant
2007-10-28, 05:05 PM
I saw it in this comic (http://xkcd.com/207/). Is that what you were thinking of?

High five! :smallsmile: *gives cookie*

Collin152
2007-10-28, 05:06 PM
Where does it say that it runs on real physics? Using real world physics just introduces too many questions to be a feasible way of looking at DnD. This world has Portable Holes and Endless Decanters and wizards who can cast spells and rogues who can crawl through holes in a barrier made out of pure force. Physics shouldn't apply unless otherwise stated.

Rebuttal: Where does it say it doesn't?
Unless stated otherwise, real world physics apply.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-28, 05:09 PM
Actually, this discussion was kinda solved before, wasn't it? Someone posted the reason Umbral Blots don't destroy the multiverse by existing, which is it being insulated from the air (or any medium unless commanded). If you would like another, different answer, annihilation thingies just have a sort of magnetic forcefield around them. Unless commanded, the forcefield can't be reached (Y'know, a real life lightsaber would work similar, but it owuld be unbreachable period).

SilveryCord
2007-10-28, 05:11 PM
When you fall, you get hurt. How is that different from real life?

Okay, let me rephrase that question:
In real life, could a naked human, with no help or parachute or anything, fall 200 feet and survive? That's equivalent to being fully immersed in acid for two rounds, something else that most humans would have trouble surviving, unless, of course, they were higher leveled DnD characters. (A level 20 fighter could survive either without magic, and even a level 10 fighter has a good chance of surviving one of them.)

My point isn't that DnD and real physics are always at odds, but rather, the DnD rules are trying to explain a fantasy world. You simply can't reduce a ruling to real-world physics, it's up to the DM's disgression to decide whatever path allows the campaign to continue in the most simple way possible.

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-28, 05:13 PM
Okay, let me rephrase that question:
In real life, could a naked human, with no help or parachute or anything, fall 200 feet and survive?

Yes. Yes he could. He'd probably be crippled for life, but he could survive it. Depends how he lands.

If he landed on his head, a fall from five feet would kill him. If he landed on his feet, he'd shatter his legs into itty bitty pieces, but his vital organs would be fine, even from two hundred feet.

kpenguin
2007-10-28, 05:15 PM
Okay, let me rephrase that question:
In real life, could a naked human, with no help or parachute or anything, fall 200 feet and survive?

Well... yes. Vensa Vulovic holds the world record for surviving a fall without a parachute, with the miraculous survival of a 33,316 ft. fall.

Ulzgoroth
2007-10-28, 05:16 PM
I am not certain whether or not a human has ever survived hitting the ground at terminal velocity. I doubt it's completely impossible...just very unlikely. (Ninjas point to yes!)

But then, no human ever has been anywhere near a level 10 character, let alone level 20. So unless you plan to prove it's physically impossible for a human body to survive such an impact, you're not getting very far with that.

As for immersion in acid...you've got to define acid first. The real world definition of acid includes plenty of things that wouldn't harm you at all.

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-28, 05:19 PM
As for immersion in acid...you've got to define acid first. The real world definition of acid includes plenty of things that wouldn't harm you at all.

Milk, for example. Most tap water. Orange juice.


What happened to the god of joy? :smalleek:

Oh, this is his even twin Tash. God of Fire and Trickery.

Collin152
2007-10-28, 05:20 PM
Yep. Something with pH oh say... 6.98795 is an acid (assuming pH works that way. I can't remember if they use decimals) that is about as neutral as water. If id did anything, you'd itch. Like, from the bugs that have no trouble surviving in it.

Leliel
2007-10-28, 05:38 PM
What I wanna know is...If hits the seabed and and there is no-one around, does it make a sound?:smallbiggrin:

Collin152
2007-10-28, 05:40 PM
What I wanna know is...If hits the seabed and and there is no-one around, does it make a sound?:smallbiggrin:

Yes. It hits the seabed, destroys it, water floods the area the seabed was. It sounds kinda like...
-Splooooooaaaaargggggeeeooooph!-

SilveryCord
2007-10-28, 05:46 PM
As for immersion in acid...you've got to define acid first.
The corrosive kind. What is that, exactly? RAW doesn't say, but some dragons spit it, some mages Elemental Mastery their spells into it, and some are immune to it but can still drown in it.


The real world definition of acid includes plenty of things that wouldn't harm you at all.
Which is sort of exactly my point. You can't mesh abstractions like HP and complications like real world physics. There is no correct way to respond to the original question other to say that it is entirely up to the DM. There are no real rules that hint at the answer or create a framework with which to solve the problem. Conjecturing solutions involving physics assumes something that may or may not be true.

Ulzgoroth
2007-10-28, 05:53 PM
The corrosive kind. What is that, exactly? RAW doesn't say, but some dragons spit it, some mages Elemental Mastery their spells into it, and some are immune to it but can still drown in it.


Which is sort of exactly my point. You can't mesh abstractions like HP and complications like real world physics. There is no correct way to respond to the original question other to say that it is entirely up to the DM. There are no real rules that hint at the answer or create a framework with which to solve the problem. Conjecturing solutions involving physics assumes something that may or may not be true.
This isn't an insurmountable issue. You just have to figure out what 'D&D acid' equates to. I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough about practical corrosive damage to make a guess I'd use. Nor really about what strong acids do to humans in the level of detail needed.

What you can't do is just say 'immersion in acid' will surely kill any human, without giving any referents for what that acid is.

kpenguin
2007-10-28, 05:57 PM
Well, the acid in D&D must be very corrosive, since being submersed in it deals as much damage as being submersed in lava.

Collin152
2007-10-28, 06:11 PM
Hmm... Hydrofloric?

Gralamin
2007-10-28, 06:14 PM
Well, the acid in D&D must be very corrosive, since being submersed in it deals as much damage as being submersed in lava.

I'm guessing super concentrated Hydrochloric acid. 10M alone is a -1.0 pH.

Edit: ^ is probably right. Hydrofluoric is more acidic
Apparently I've read lies!

This Site (http://www.sensorex.com/support/education/pH_calculator.html) should help with this thought experiment.

Collin152
2007-10-28, 06:33 PM
I'm guessing super concentrated Hydrochloric acid. 10M alone is a -1.0 pH.

Edit: ^ is probably right. Hydrofluoric is more acidic
Apparently I've read lies!

This Site (http://www.sensorex.com/support/education/pH_calculator.html) should help with this thought experiment.

All this time, I've been mislead. Curse you, Science! Baleful Polymorph! Blindness! Greater Bestow Curse! Flesh to Stone!

John Campbell
2007-10-28, 07:15 PM
Okay, let me rephrase that question:
In real life, could a naked human, with no help or parachute or anything, fall 200 feet and survive? That's equivalent to being fully immersed in acid for two rounds, something else that most humans would have trouble surviving, unless, of course, they were higher leveled DnD characters. (A level 20 fighter could survive either without magic, and even a level 10 fighter has a good chance of surviving one of them.)

One of the guys I play with actually did. (Okay, he wasn't naked, and he did have a parachute; it just wasn't working.) He was Airborne, they were doing a low-altitude drop, and due to unexpected wind conditions and a dumb move by a fresh lieutenant, his 'chute collapsed. He was high enough that that was Really Bad, and low enough that there was no way he could get the reserve 'chute deployed in time to do any good. Over hard-baked clay. In drop school, they teach you how to land in situations like that. If you do it right, and you're lucky, you break all of the impact points, but you don't die.

He did it right. He spent a good long while in the hospital, but they put him back together pretty much the way he was before, though one leg is slightly shorter than the other now. And not only is he walking fine now, but after the impact, he got up, secured his 'chute, shouldered his pack, and walked to the aid station to report in. (Or so he was told afterwards. He doesn't remember that part.) Adrenaline is an amazing thing.

And the lieutenant that caused it was in the next bed when he woke up. His parachute worked, but he screwed up a perfectly ordinary landing. Broke both legs.

Jack_Simth
2007-10-28, 07:38 PM
Okay, let me rephrase that question:
In real life, could a naked human, with no help or parachute or anything, fall 200 feet and survive? That's equivalent to being fully immersed in acid for two rounds, something else that most humans would have trouble surviving, unless, of course, they were higher leveled DnD characters. (A level 20 fighter could survive either without magic, and even a level 10 fighter has a good chance of surviving one of them.)

Real-life humans have inexplicably survived events you wouldn't think anyone could survive. I'll leave the specific examples to the ninjas. Granted, you generally wouldn't think anyone could survive them because the odds of survival are really low, but it happens.


My point isn't that DnD and real physics are always at odds, but rather, the DnD rules are trying to explain a fantasy world. You simply can't reduce a ruling to real-world physics, it's up to the DM's disgression to decide whatever path allows the campaign to continue in the most simple way possible.
Mostly correct - do note, though, that a great many of the mechanics actually model real life reasonably well a surprising amount, once you get over the fact that real life characters pretty much cap at 5th (and these are the "once in a generation" people), with most being 1st or 2nd level; and that most are working with the standard array (10's and 11's), or the nonelite array (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8), and NPC classes. Sure, there are oddities and granularity issues (mostly there for ease of play) but for the most part, D&D makes for a surprisingly good model.

Kompera
2007-10-28, 09:13 PM
I've always found that solution a shade tyrannical.
Why, thank you! :smallsmile:


Well, the thing is, if you don't do that, you don't have a frame of reference and therefore have no way of speculating the physics of the world.
Who needs to? And to what end?


For gods' sake, D&D worlds run on real physics unless they say otherwise! Where have you ever read that there's no such things as molecules in a D&D book? Nowhere? Right!
Are you serious? In a system where people can be saved from dying by drowning them, and in which objects can travel any arbitrarily large distance within any given 6 second round by using enough peasants to hand them off, you dare to assert that "real physics" is an integral part of the game system?

No, it is not. It is not even close. Nor are many of the legends, fables, mythologies, or epics on which the game setting is based. Take any given fable and try to vet the "real physics" against what is known to the average high school age child today. I'm sure you'll be able to find a good many clear violations of physics.

There is a slippery slope to trying to supply rigorous physics to a fantasy realm. If you're doing it as a DM, that can let you justify story hooks and plot arcs. And that is fine. But the players need not be troubled with physics, nor should they trouble the GM with physics. There is nearly no possible advantage to this exercise, and a lot of harm which can come from it. All it would take is a single player with a more clear grasp of physics and the ability to convince the GM that this or that effect would "of course" follow this or that cause. And the end result is the spoiling of a perfectly good fantasy realm.

There was a player in my gaming group who was fairly clever at convincing the GM to allow this or that undue advantage. He would go about this by asking what seemed to be a simple question. The question would be crafted to give an answer he wanted, whether "yes" or "no", that he could then use as the basis for another question, and another, finally concluding with the result he had wanted to achieve all along. And which was either in violation of the rules of the game or at the very least teetering on the edge of being illegal. But having lead the DM to the conclusion in small steps rather than via the "big picture" right from the start, he usually got what he wanted.

When this player would play in a game I was running, since I'd seen his MO before, I'd cut him off and ask "What are you trying to accomplish?" Once he was forced to state his goal, it became far easier to rule against him without his having the weight of all the answers the GM had previously given him which eventually ended up supporting his position. Almost all of his trickery was based on real world physics or what appeared to be common sense responses. And all of his trickery ended up breaking games.

There is zero value in allowing real world causation or physics or knowledge of economics or germ theory or any other such subject to interject themselves into your D&D game.

thereaper
2007-10-28, 10:02 PM
Pardon me, but I do believe there is something you are neglecting here.

First of all, an object in motion tends to stay in motion, with the same velocity (speed in a particular direction) unless an outside force acts to change this. This is impulse = change in momentum.

This means that without gravity (outside force providing said impulse), the sphere would continue on a strait line, With no effect of gravity being balanced by the normal force (something below the sphere, supporting it) upon the sphere, this means that the sphere would fly off into space.

In other words, without a centripetal force (a force directed towards the axis of rotation), objects tend to fly off into the distance, as happens when you swing a base ball around your head on a string, and then suddenly let go. You have removed the centripetal force, and so are no longer constantly altering the momentum of the base ball. Without this constant alteration, the base ball continues to travel in a line, which is then effected only by gravity causing it to fall earthwards.

Well, to be honest, I was referring to how it would be able to float without falling. This issue could be solved by it "moving" at the same rate as the Earth's rotation.


Why, thank you! :smallsmile:


Who needs to? And to what end?

We do. If we do not, then the possibility of ANY occurence, no matter how basic, would be brought into question unless the rules or DM specifically say it is possible. In a world that does not operate on real world physics, chances are that life as we know it (or could even possibly imagine/define) would not exist, and if we did we would still not even begin to be able to imagine how it would work. In a world whose physics are not identical (or nearly so) to our own, even the idea of walking might be impossible. We must assume almost identical physics or we can't do anything at all.



Are you serious? In a system where people can be saved from dying by drowning them, and in which objects can travel any arbitrarily large distance within any given 6 second round by using enough peasants to hand them off, you dare to assert that "real physics" is an integral part of the game system?

No, it is not. It is not even close. Nor are many of the legends, fables, mythologies, or epics on which the game setting is based. Take any given fable and try to vet the "real physics" against what is known to the average high school age child today. I'm sure you'll be able to find a good many clear violations of physics.

There is a slippery slope to trying to supply rigorous physics to a fantasy realm. If you're doing it as a DM, that can let you justify story hooks and plot arcs. And that is fine. But the players need not be troubled with physics, nor should they trouble the GM with physics. There is nearly no possible advantage to this exercise, and a lot of harm which can come from it. All it would take is a single player with a more clear grasp of physics and the ability to convince the GM that this or that effect would "of course" follow this or that cause. And the end result is the spoiling of a perfectly good fantasy realm.

There was a player in my gaming group who was fairly clever at convincing the GM to allow this or that undue advantage. He would go about this by asking what seemed to be a simple question. The question would be crafted to give an answer he wanted, whether "yes" or "no", that he could then use as the basis for another question, and another, finally concluding with the result he had wanted to achieve all along. And which was either in violation of the rules of the game or at the very least teetering on the edge of being illegal. But having lead the DM to the conclusion in small steps rather than via the "big picture" right from the start, he usually got what he wanted.

When this player would play in a game I was running, since I'd seen his MO before, I'd cut him off and ask "What are you trying to accomplish?" Once he was forced to state his goal, it became far easier to rule against him without his having the weight of all the answers the GM had previously given him which eventually ended up supporting his position. Almost all of his trickery was based on real world physics or what appeared to be common sense responses. And all of his trickery ended up breaking games.

There is zero value in allowing real world causation or physics or knowledge of economics or germ theory or any other such subject to interject themselves into your D&D game.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're taking this way out of context. First of all, yes, it does operate on nearly the same physics as the real world until magic is taken into account (which accounts for most of the differences). If it did not, then it is almost certain that the planets and characters would not exist.

Example: The relative strengths of the four fundamental forces of nature are key to the universe as we know it. If gravity were made even a little stronger, all the matter in the universe would clump together into a black hole. If there was even one more spatial dimension, the effect of gravity on objects would not be enough and matter would not clump together at all. If up quarks did not have exactly a +1/3 electric charge, protons (and therefore all matter that we typically encounter) as we know them would not exist.

The ramifications of a universe that does not operate on the same (or very nearly the same) laws of physics are either incredibly simple (nothing is there) or so incredibly alien that we cannot even begin to fathom them. Therefore, yes, in the absence of the slight variations (such as magic, which only works because it is so fickle and haphazard, and thereby we can make things work by having it only apply to those phenomena which are different), we can assume that the laws of the universe are the same as those of the real world, based on the fact that there are people there at all.

All that said, I think you're misinterpreting the purpose of these thought processes. They're not intended to be used to justify ulterior motives; their purpose is to rationalize; to maintain suspension of disbelief. This is supposed to be used to explain how things are already said to work. One could try to use them to make predictions of what is possible, of course, but it's not foolproof. For the example of that guy who asks questions with an ulterior motive, one can answer the questions the way he wants to but still say no to what he wants to do by bringing up magic, which thanks to it's haphazard style only has effects on whatever phenomena it has to.

Aquillion
2007-10-28, 10:41 PM
For the question of getting it down there: Just make a Psion Uncarnate. They're incorperal, so they can fly and breathe through water as if it were air, and no matter what they don't have to worry about being sucked into anything. And they have high int, so they'll have no trouble controlling the sphere.

And in order to have any meaningful discussions here, we must assume that the D&D world operates like the real world when the rules don't explictly indicate otherwise. Without that, almost everything would come down to houserules and DM fiat... if you want to go down that road, fine, but you can't really use it as a basis to discuss anything about the system with other people online, because then your world is just an incomprehensible mess of houserules. Discussing D&D with people who aren't part of your group requires the assumption of a "typical" world with no houserules; and a world like that has to operate under typical, real-world assumptions.

...there is a less extreme use for this ability, incidently. A Sphere of Annihilation could plainly be used to drain a lake, pool, or other small body of water without incident. I don't think anyone would seriously suggest that that wouldn't work. The only reason to bring up DM fiat when this is extended to the ocean is the old bad "no DM would actually allow that" argument... which is probably true, but doesn't make for fun discussion.

Dervag
2007-10-28, 11:34 PM
We do. If we do not, then the possibility of ANY occurence, no matter how basic, would be brought into question unless the rules or DM specifically say it is possible. In a world that does not operate on real world physics, chances are that life as we know it (or could even possibly imagine/define) would not exist, and if we did we would still not even begin to be able to imagine how it would work. In a world whose physics are not identical (or nearly so) to our own, even the idea of walking might be impossible. We must assume almost identical physics or we can't do anything at all.I'm a physicist (well, apprentice physicist), and I don't have to assume identical physics.

For example, pretty much everything we need to explain in D&D would be explained just as well by the "classical" physics of the late 19th century, without the use of quantum mechanics, relativity, or subatomic particles. Some things could be explained better. For instance, teleportation or near-instantaneous travel does not violate any essential, necessary assumptions of classical physics; it does not lead to nonsensical results. In classical physics, there is no reason why things can not or should not go faster than light. Likewise, there is no essential problem with time travel. Aside from any paradoxes caused by a time traveler, his actions don't break any other fundamental rules.

Only in 20th century physics, with the advent of the Lorentz transform and the resulting development of the theory of relativity, do teleportation and time travel cause problems. All these problems would be solved if the universe contained a simple universal frame of reference (such as the luminiferous ether) that we could use to define motion and positions.

Since, by all appearances, the D&D universe really does contain such a medium (the Ethereal Plane, which is in point-to-point correspondence with our own universe and on which all distances and directions are apparently the same), there's no reason to bring relativity into things.

Likewise, radioactivity and subatomic particles (other than, perhaps, electrons) only arise in very specific phenomena. The only thing it is required to explain for the macroscopic universe to work the way it does is why stars burn and why planets don't freeze solid over billions of years. In a D&D universe, there are ample explanations for this without reference to subatomic physics. Even electricity can be explained by a flow of a 'fluid' (as it was in the 18th and early 19th century) without loss.

Quantum mechanics is required to explain a few specific predictions of advanced classical theories (one of which predicts that if you open an oven door you should be disintegrated by an infinite blast of gamma rays, and another which predicts that atoms made of electrons orbiting protons should implode over time). Neither of these physical theories, or the others that give rise to quantum mechanics, has to be true and work the same way for the universe we see in D&D to work.

Physical theories are fits to the data. If we limit ourselves to the kinds of data characters normally observe in the D&D world (macroscopic data), we have a much wider range of viable theories, with very different consequences on the subtle and microscopic levels.


Why, thank you! :smallsmile:Look, it's not a criticism of any person. It's a criticism of the approach. I could have called it "unfair;" would you have interpreted that as saying that you, personally, are an unfair person?

I dislike that approach, for more or less the reason I gave, and because I prefer to have a rational explanation for why I think something shouldn't be possible or why some particular effect does not happen as a result of a particular cause.

If we have the cause "Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the sea," then it is by no means unreasonable to have the effect "the ocean gets sucked in." A player who suggests this as a tactic for (eventually) draining an ocean is not being unreasonable in any a priori sense, any more than they would be for proposing to use the Sphere to drill a hole in a wall or to remove a hazardous explosive substance from the vicinity.

If I don't want it to happen, I need to come up with a good reason for it not to happen. This may involve tweaking the D&D rules, or it may involve a trick within the rules (such as adding a Decanter of Endless Water). But as DM, I see part of my job to preserve the internal consistency of the setting, and that isn't possible unless I take a consistent approach to what is and is not possible and make sure not to arbitrarily rule out solutions that produce effects I don't want.

Hence my use of the expression 'tyrannical'. A tyrant is not necessarily a bad or malicious person; see the original Greeks for reference. However, a tyrant hoards all authority and power to themselves and uses it jealously, frequently in such a way as to ensure that they retain authority and power.

In D&D terms, a tyrannical DM would be one who makes a routine, ubiquitous policy of hoarding the power to define what will happen in the game universe. Railroading is one aspect of this; restricting the players from trying new or unusual things is another. It is easy and natural and common for DMs to be tyrannical, because a bit of tyrannical behavior is required with any but the best of players.


Are you serious? In a system where people can be saved from dying by drowning them, and in which objects can travel any arbitrarily large distance within any given 6 second round by using enough peasants to hand them off, you dare to assert that "real physics" is an integral part of the game system?Those are based on what can quite reasonably be held to be misinterpretations of the rules. For instance, drowning "reduces" someone to 0 hit points. Since "reduce" is a verb not normally construed to be a synonym for "increase," a strict reading would suggest that a person at negative hit points could not gain hit points by drowning. Likewise, the action required by one peasant to pass the object to another peasant is not defined in the rules to take zero time. It is defined to take some small fraction of the 6-second round, such that the peasant can take their normal actions in addition to that action.

Now, 6 seconds may be too little time for a round, but the point remains that it is entirely possible for this 'passing off' event to take as much as a second to match the definition. The rules do not state that objects take exactly zero time to move from passer to passee, only that they do not take enough time to be relevant in the abstract system of the game world.

Thus, a reasonable DM operating on the defined nature of the free and swift actions (which are specifically stated as taking nonzero time to accomplish), would rule out the commoner quarterstaff railgun.


There is a slippery slope to trying to supply rigorous physics to a fantasy realm. If you're doing it as a DM, that can let you justify story hooks and plot arcs. And that is fine. But the players need not be troubled with physics, nor should they trouble the GM with physics.I'd say that depends on circumstances. The player should not harass the GM with physics or use physics to explain why a piece of magic cannot function as it does. Magic violates the basic laws of physics by nature.

But if the player uses physics to estimate, say, how much a room full of gold weighs or how long it will take to drain the reservoir by dropping a Sphere of Annihilation in the bottom of it, then there's nothing wrong with that. It's just another parameter of the plan, as would be estimating the cash value of the room full of gold or the amount of time required to drain the reservoir by repeated casting of Destroy Water.


There was a player in my gaming group who was fairly clever at convincing the GM to allow this or that undue advantage. He would go about this by asking what seemed to be a simple question. The question would be crafted to give an answer he wanted, whether "yes" or "no", that he could then use as the basis for another question, and another, finally concluding with the result he had wanted to achieve all along. And which was either in violation of the rules of the game or at the very least teetering on the edge of being illegal. But having lead the DM to the conclusion in small steps rather than via the "big picture" right from the start, he usually got what he wanted.

When this player would play in a game I was running, since I'd seen his MO before, I'd cut him off and ask "What are you trying to accomplish?"This is the standard, relatively simple defense against an attempt to lead to an unreasonable conclusion by sophistry. Your player's sophistry deserved exactly what you gave it, and no mistake. I prefer to actually outsophisticate sophist arguments, because I find it amusing to do so and I have some practice in doing so, but this is purely a personal preference and one that I cannot always indulge for want of time (such as when in the middle of a gaming session).


Almost all of his trickery was based on real world physics or what appeared to be common sense responses. And all of his trickery ended up breaking games.Also, physics tricksters are easier to defeat when one has a considerable formal education in physics. I do, but this is purely a personal choice on my part and not one that any normal person of reasonably functioning intelligence should have to make (only very, very strange people should be expected to become a physicist).

As a physicist in training, I actually have fun doing this sort of thing, which is a big part of why I like doing it from the DM's perspective. And I like doing it with economics and germ theory and such too, for the same reasons. I like to think I avoid doing it from the player's perspective.


There is zero value in allowing real world causation or physics or knowledge of economics or germ theory or any other such subject to interject themselves into your D&D game.Actually, sometimes such is useful because it helps you to avoid making unreasonable demands on someone's suspension of disbelief.

For instance, a high-level fighter is quite capable of entering a battle at the base of a 50-foot cliff by leaping off the cliff and into the fray. In real life, any human or quasihuman being that did such a thing would be a fool, and would be doomed to serious injury or death for their folly.

Application of real life causation and physics suggests that falling off a great height should be fatal, regardless of whether it really is in D&D. And, therefore, that falls from a great height are to be avoided, just as would any other source of virtually certain death. This places a lower burden on our suspension of disbelief and increases the sense of relief when the character (unsurprisingly, from the statistics) survives such a great fall on a later date.

John Campbell
2007-10-29, 12:05 AM
In a heroic fantasy game, there's something to be said for having your fantasy hero enter battle by leaping off a 50' cliff into the fray, though.

(I actually did something very like it last session, but I cheat - I have a continuous-effect magic item that grants feather fall.)

Irreverent Fool
2007-10-29, 04:42 AM
It's magic. You see, the orb destroys anything it touches and passes through things destroying them on it's way. It is still an object on its own and takes up space. When it's in the water, the water is just around it, just like when it's in the air. So when it's sitting there, it's not doing anything.

Now, move it and it destroys whatever it moves through. So then it destroys the water that used to be in the space in which it is now occupying.

Physics don't apply, it won't drain the ocean, don't kill catgirls.

Or do. I kind of like the idea of a single minor artifact being capable of destroying the oceans.

Just imagine what the major ones can do.

Kompera
2007-10-29, 06:03 AM
Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're taking this way out of context. First of all, yes, it does operate on nearly the same physics as the real world until magic is taken into account (which accounts for most of the differences). If it did not, then it is almost certain that the planets and characters would not exist.

I think that it is you who are taking things out of context. For the first part, neither of the examples I gave involve magic at all. Both examples are ridiculous in the extreme, but "work" according to the rules/physics of the game system.

Look, I'm not at all arguing that the players shouldn't expect to play within a reasonable set of physical laws. So, please, no hyperbole on how the universe as we know it can't exist if "real world" physics are not applied. The world operates, and that is all which need be known. As it is convenient for the DM, the laws of physics do apply.

But I do object to any close examination of those laws. It simply can not serve the game in any productive fashion. No GM should be subject to a player breaking out a physics text to try to change a ruling. And just to be sure that there is no misunderstanding of my motive, I had a fairly rigorous physics education while in the pursuit of my engineering degree. But regardless of the level of familiarity of the DM with physics, this is a game. No player should waste a moment of time arguing for a circumstance penalty to the BBEG "Because the circumference of the stick would be rather uncomfortable for flying more than 5 minutes, as referenced in this text on sport therapy and cross-indexed by the weight of the BBEG divided by the square inch contact area of the broomstick."

By "real world" physics, flying on a Broom of Flying would be horribly uncomfortable, and there is no "oh, but it's magic" to fall back upon. The magic as described states that it flies and can do so at a certain speed based on the weight load placed upon it. There is no mention of mystical passenger restraints or other magical support systems in the description of the Broom of Flying. A broom is just a ridiculous mode of transport which no one would use even were the broom able to fly. But it is a part of the mythos on which the game system is based, and it is a magic item which the players may hope to obtain. And so the "physics" of how awful a mode of transport it would be are best ignored in favor of playability.

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-29, 06:21 AM
An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Fixer
2007-10-29, 07:06 AM
My solution?

An ocean deity is notified of this threat to his domain. He sets up a barrier around the sphere that moves with it & blocks all water & air from entering. Problem solved.
I like this idea best.

Why bother arguing physics when you have divine intervention as a possibility? Hell, according to many of the portfolios the god would know weeks to years in advance of the threat and likely prevent it from happening.

tainsouvra
2007-10-29, 01:47 PM
Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're taking this way out of context. First of all, yes, it does operate on nearly the same physics as the real world until magic is taken into account (which accounts for most of the differences). If it did not, then it is almost certain that the planets and characters would not exist. What planets? Think about the D&D universe a bit before you answer that, it's not a flippant question. Not just thereaper...anyone proposing taking real-world physics seriously in D&D should ponder that a moment. It's rather enlightening :smallsmile:

John Campbell
2007-10-29, 04:33 PM
Yeah... this is fantasy, not hard science fiction. There's absolutely no reason that your gameworld can't be a flat disc carried on the back of four colossal elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, and the sun and moon be shining gold and silver discs carried through the sky in horse-drawn chariots, pursued by tremendous wolves whose ultimate success in devouring them will herald the end of the world, and the stars be the immortal remains of great heros that were cast into the vault of the heavens by appreciative gods.

Okay, I'm mixing cosmologies just a little, but you get the point.

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-29, 04:39 PM
Yeah... this is fantasy, not hard science fiction. There's absolutely no reason that your gameworld can't be a flat disc carried on the back of four colossal elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, and the sun and moon be shining gold and silver discs carried through the sky in horse-drawn chariots, pursued by tremendous wolves whose ultimate success in devouring them will herald the end of the world, and the stars be the immortal remains of great heros that were cast into the vault of the heavens by appreciative gods.

Okay, I'm mixing cosmologies just a little, but you get the point.

Oerth, Eberron, Aber-Toril, Athas and Krynn are all explicitely stated to be roughly spherical planets that orbit their sun.

Eldritch_Ent
2007-10-29, 04:45 PM
Actually, I don't thik it would do anything- In fact, this can be explained rather simply through osmosis. (Or the law of physics that states flowing things tend to even themselves out.)

Now, the Sphere of Annihalation is a solid object. Yes, it is a solid object that will destroy you utterly, but it is still a solid object.

Air or water only rush in to fill in a vacuum- literal empty space. If there's a solid object, they don't all rush in- instead you simply have occasional air or water particles bumping up against whatever it is is in them. This is apparently the case with the Sphere of annihalation- it isn't a hole in the universe, it seems to simply be a lump of non-reactive antimatter. Thus the only particles it destroys are those that "accidently" bump into it, generating little more than a light breeze.

Now excuse me, I'm going to hold a mass funeral for all the catgirls I just killed.

MCerberus
2007-10-29, 04:48 PM
One view is that since water is an element and since it is submerged in a pure element and not matter made of different elements, it would just sit there like an alkaline earth metal submerged in liquid Mercury. This would also explain why it doesn't instantly vacuum up all the air on the planet. Weee for crazy alternative physics.

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-29, 04:51 PM
Now, the Sphere of Annihalation is a solid object.

No. It's nothing. Not vaccuum. Not absence of something. The exact opposite of something. Nothing.

A big sphere o' nothing.

John Campbell
2007-10-29, 05:13 PM
Oerth, Eberron, Aber-Toril, Athas and Krynn are all explicitely stated to be roughly spherical planets that orbit their sun.

They're also explicitly stated to be contained in crystal spheres that float in the phlogiston. (Or something like that. Gotta admit that my Spelljammer cosmology is a little rusty.)

And there's nothing saying that you have to play D&D in a gameworld that you're renting from WotC. It didn't even used to be the norm, though that seems to have changed in these days of a rule for everything and everything by the rules. I'd played D&D for more than ten years before I played in my first campaign that was set in a TSR-created world, and it was almost ten more before I played in another one.

Josh the Aspie
2007-10-29, 06:03 PM
No. It's nothing. Not vaccuum. Not absence of something. The exact opposite of something. Nothing.

A big sphere o' nothing.

So to make sure I have this strait, you are saying rather than the sphere being no-thing (as in the absence of something), you are addressing the concept of nothing as a quality, and the sphere of annihilation as something having an infinite, or nigh-infinite amount of this quality, which cancels out the quality of the existence of substance.

Would that not be equivalent to it being an aperture to the negative energy plane?

Then again, aren't the raw materials for spheres of annihilation harvested from points where the nothingness of the negative energy plain collapses in upon it's self?

Collin152
2007-10-29, 06:04 PM
They're also explicitly stated to be contained in crystal spheres that float in the phlogiston.

Right, and that is stated because otherwise, we'd assume it diddn't, as per the norm of reality. Unless something is stated that otherwise defies real life physics, thats how it works. When something destroys things utterly, it creates a vaccum. Water will fill the vaccum. The water that filled it will be destroyed. The sphere is motionless in relation to the earth, ergo it continues the cycle ad infinite.

Josh the Aspie
2007-10-29, 06:06 PM
Oerth, Eberron, Aber-Toril, Athas and Krynn are all explicitely stated to be roughly spherical planets that orbit their sun.

It was my understanding that Krynn cannon was one of the few exceptions, and that the planet exists inside a sphere upon which the stars were painted, and the sun is actually Rerox's (spelling?) forge.

Now, whether this is superstition, or the actual composition of the world is debatable, but when Tass and Flint met in the afterlife...

Arakune
2007-10-29, 07:37 PM
Well... yes. Vensa Vulovic holds the world record for surviving a fall without a parachute, with the miraculous survival of a 33,316 ft. fall.

And she didn't even become totally crippled.


Vulović was the only survivor on the flight. She continued working for JAT at a desk job following her full recovery from injuries which included a fractured skull, two broken legs and three broken vertebrae, one of which was crushed and left her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. She regained the use of her legs only after surgery. She is considered a national heroine throughout the former Yugoslavia.

Aquillion
2007-10-29, 07:47 PM
Actually, I don't thik it would do anything- In fact, this can be explained rather simply through osmosis. (Or the law of physics that states flowing things tend to even themselves out.)

Now, the Sphere of Annihalation is a solid object. Yes, it is a solid object that will destroy you utterly, but it is still a solid object.

Air or water only rush in to fill in a vacuum- literal empty space. If there's a solid object, they don't all rush in- instead you simply have occasional air or water particles bumping up against whatever it is is in them. This is apparently the case with the Sphere of annihalation- it isn't a hole in the universe, it seems to simply be a lump of non-reactive antimatter. Thus the only particles it destroys are those that "accidently" bump into it, generating little more than a light breeze.No. Even ignoring your definition of the Sphere of Annihilation as a solid object (this isn't clear), there's a more serious problem with this.

Water has weight. If you put a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the ocean, the weight of all the water above it will be pushed downwards towards it; the weight of all the water around it will be pushed towards it from the water overhead, as well. When a Sphere of Annihilation destroys the water above it, more water will be forced downwards by pressure to take its place.

This is not complicated physics. This is basic Aristotelian physics on the same level of "if you push something, it will move" and "gravity exerts a pull on objects."

If you put an object in the water, it will get wet because the water is pushed against it. If you open a drain at the bottom of the tub, the entire tub will drain, and not just the tiny amount of water directly near the drain itself. If you accept that these two things are part of D&D physics, then a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the tub will drain all the water out of the tub, and a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the ocean will drain the entire ocean (or at least drain it until there is no more water in the area with the Sphere of Annihilation in it, and certainly no water above or around it.)

Water is affected by gravity. As long as you accept that gravity exists in the D&D universe, a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the ocean will drain the entire ocean unless something else prevents it.

Starbuck_II
2007-10-29, 07:59 PM
Hmm... Hydrofloric?

It does dissolve bones...But milk seems to stop the damage strangely.

Mewtarthio
2007-10-29, 08:14 PM
Personally, I think that a rain god will just channel some stuff from the Elemental Plane of Water to augment a few more rainstorms. This, unfortunately, means that nothing can completely destroy the ocean unless either all the gods are slain and the relevant portfolios taken by someone sympathetic to your cause or the Prime Material Plane is severed from the rest of the multiverse and rendered dead to magic.

monty
2007-10-29, 08:32 PM
Hmm... Hydrofloric?

Probably not. It's a weak acid. We're looking more for HCl, H2SO4, HNO3, etc.; one of the strong acids.

Idea Man
2007-10-29, 09:07 PM
I'm with Aquillion on this. Consider this: if the sphere of annihilation destroys the last supporting beam of a structure, say, a mine, the mine will then attempt to fall down. Anything that touches the sphere is destroyed, so the support beam will simply plunge into the void and the collapse will continue unabated.

By a similar line of thinking, water at the bottom of the ocean is pushing down on the sphere. All the water that touches it is destroyed, so more water pushes on it. Then more and more, until a truly awesome vortex is created.

Would the gods allow it? They don't appear personally to stop most things. They have heroes do that kind of thing. Besides, there has to be a god that would like this kind of devastation, much less opportunistic, short-sighted mortals.

How did it get there? Does it matter?

sikyon
2007-10-29, 09:21 PM
Air or water only rush in to fill in a vacuum- literal empty space. If there's a solid object, they don't all rush in- instead you simply have occasional air or water particles bumping up against whatever it is is in them. This is apparently the case with the Sphere of annihalation- it isn't a hole in the universe, it seems to simply be a lump of non-reactive antimatter. Thus the only particles it destroys are those that "accidently" bump into it, generating little more than a light breeze.


No... accidently bumping particles is what pressure is. Particles move in random directions, at very high velocities. The reason it doesn't generate wind is bceause the huge number of these particles sum to zero in their total direction of movment. When they come up against "nothing", however, then it's like there's a vaccume there. Those accidental particles go to the sphere, are anhiallated, and the ones behind them move into the new space because there's no particles to stop them from doing so, they are anhiallated, etc. This is what pressure is. The average pressure on the human body at sea level is around 15-20 thousand killograms.

You are right in your concept, but you -severely- underestimate the number of particles which will bump into the sphere, and how fast new particles will fill up this empty space and then get annihilated in turn.

Edit: Also, a sphere could be weightless, but this doesn't mean it couldn't have relativistic mass (and exerts a graviational force). Ie. photons have momentum but they don't have rest mass, and objects gain more momentum as they move faster. Anyhow, the energy within the sphere would have to be huge, to have an effect (not unreasonable given its nature).

Edit Edit:

I support the idea of decanters of endless water balancing the sphere of anhiallation. Like a pocket universe, which people can draw stuff from and put stuff in. This would make them a fundamental force, and pretty cool at that.

Ulzgoroth
2007-10-29, 10:32 PM
Just one more echo: fluids (air included) 'identify' empty space as something their molecules don't bounce off of. Since nothing ever bounces off it, a sphere of annihilation functions exactly like a small spherical vacuum except that it can never be filled.

MCerberus
2007-10-29, 10:39 PM
It doesn't have a mass, a fact that allows you to control it with a check with your mind. It is a gaping hole in reality. It's the exact opposite of existence the way anti-matter is to matter. If you catch a god sleeping or totally out of it, the sphere can kill the god (it would still be hard to do because you'd have to get into a situation where they get no reflex save to avoid contact).

If you would apply it to physics it has no gravitational pull in a vacuum and only acts similarly to a black hole in areas where where there are pressures of gases/liquids/plasma and only to the molecules creating the pressure.

Yah.... minor artifact.

Aquillion
2007-10-29, 11:07 PM
It doesn't have a mass, a fact that allows you to control it with a check with your mind. It is a gaping hole in reality. It's the exact opposite of existence the way anti-matter is to matter. If you catch a god sleeping or totally out of it, the sphere can kill the god (it would still be hard to do because you'd have to get into a situation where they get no reflex save to avoid contact).Sort of. Actually, the sphere doesn't mention any reflex save to avoid contact, so even a Greater Deity could be taken out with it... assuming they don't get a chance to just take control of it themselves with their massive bonuses and auto-20, or to just teleport away.

The description also says:
Only the direct intervention of a deity can restore an annihilated character.Which is not very clear. Could any deity--even a divine rank 1 deity with no access to resurrection--restore a character annihilated by the sphere? In that case, destroying a god might not last for long if they have any friends.

sikyon
2007-10-29, 11:10 PM
It doesn't have a mass, a fact that allows you to control it with a check with your mind. It is a gaping hole in reality. It's the exact opposite of existence the way anti-matter is to matter. If you catch a god sleeping or totally out of it, the sphere can kill the god (it would still be hard to do because you'd have to get into a situation where they get no reflex save to avoid contact).

If you would apply it to physics it has no gravitational pull in a vacuum and only acts similarly to a black hole in areas where where there are pressures of gases/liquids/plasma and only to the molecules creating the pressure.

Yah.... minor artifact.

It may not have a rest mass, but it could have a relativistic mass due to the energy in it.

Also, antimatter is not the "exact opposite" of matter.

I also cannot envision this sphere as a "hole" in the fabric of space-time. The curvature of space time is such that a hole like this would simply be bent around... you cant perceive a lack of reality.

MCerberus
2007-10-29, 11:12 PM
Sphere of Annihilation: A sphere of annihilation is a globe of absolute blackness, a ball of nothingness 2 feet in diameter. The object is actually a hole in the continuity of the multiverse. Any matter that comes in contact with a sphere is instantly sucked into the void, gone, and utterly destroyed. Only the direct intervention of a deity can restore an annihilated character.

Since such a thing does not exist to our knowledge then it doesn't quite fit with what we know about space-time.

Source SRD (http://geocities.com/sovelior/srd/magicItemsICA.html)

Kompera
2007-10-29, 11:19 PM
If you catch a god sleeping or totally out of it, the sphere can kill the god (it would still be hard to do because you'd have to get into a situation where they get no reflex save to avoid contact).
But then, being a god, it then grants it's own desire to be restored.


Only the direct intervention of a deity can restore an annihilated character.

Josh the Aspie
2007-10-29, 11:41 PM
It doesn't have a mass, a fact that allows you to control it with a check with your mind. It is a gaping hole in reality. It's the exact opposite of existence the way anti-matter is to matter. If you catch a god sleeping or totally out of it, the sphere can kill the god (it would still be hard to do because you'd have to get into a situation where they get no reflex save to avoid contact).

Anti-mater is matter where protons have negative charge and electrons have positive charge. However neutrons are still neutral in charge. They still all have positive mass. When they meet, energy is released.

I do believe that what you are thinking of is negative mater, where there is negative mass involved, and a particle of positive mater, and a corresponding particle of negative mater meet, they simply cancel each-other out.

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-30, 02:56 AM
But then, being a god, it then grants it's own desire to be restored.

Dead gods can't do anything. That's why Aoskar doesn't grant his clerics spells anymore.

Dervag
2007-10-30, 06:32 AM
Actually, I don't thik it would do anything- In fact, this can be explained rather simply through osmosis. (Or the law of physics that states flowing things tend to even themselves out.)

Air or water only rush in to fill in a vacuum- literal empty space.

If there's a solid object, they don't all rush in- instead you simply have occasional air or water particles bumping up against whatever it is is in them.This appears to reflect a misunderstanding about the nature of a vacuum. A vacuum is simply a space where there is nothing. It can't somehow 'suck' matter into it faster than that matter would move anyway.

The number of air molecules striking the surface of a solid sphere such as a beachball and the number of air molecules striking the surface of a random spherical volume of air, or vacuum, or any other thing are the same. The only difference is that the air molecules striking a solid object normally bounce off, while air molecules passing into a permeable volume (a sphere of air at equal pressure, for instance) will be counterbalanced by the air molecules leaving the volume. If you create a sphere of ordinary vacuum, air molecules enter it without being counterbalanced by other air molecules leaving it, creating a wind until the pressures balance out.

The reason air and water move so quickly to fill a vacuum is that the molecules of air and water are moving at a pretty good clip already because of the thermal motion of the molecules. Since they're already bouncing around at hundreds of meters per second, quite a lot of particles enter the sphere in a short period of time.

The difference between a sphere of vacuum and a Sphere of Annihilation is that the Sphere of Annihilation never gets filled up; the flow of air or water into it never decreases because it never starts balancing that flow out with a flow in the opposite direction. However, you're right that once you get any decent kind of distance from the sphere, all you'll feel is a light breeze or weak current. But that's not because of some special property of 'solid objects' that makes them less attractive to molecules of air; it's because the flow of air or water into the Sphere, measured in molecules per second, seems less significant as you spread it out over a wider area. Similarly, the fast-moving current of a firehose, measured in water molecules passing the mouth of the hose per second, would be much gentler if you spread the stream of water out into something the width of a river.


This is apparently the case with the Sphere of annihalation- it isn't a hole in the universe, it seems to simply be a lump of non-reactive antimatter. Thus the only particles it destroys are those that "accidently" bump into it, generating little more than a light breeze.No such animal. Antimatter can't be nonreactive, any more than fire can be cold. The reactivity of antimatter is required by its properties; nothing that matches the description of antimatter could avoid reacting with normal matter.


I do believe that what you are thinking of is negative mater, where there is negative mass involved, and a particle of positive mater, and a corresponding particle of negative mater meet, they simply cancel each-other out.To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing in any existing theory of physics, so we still have the Sphere being 'made' of something totally different from anything known or predicted by physical laws.


One view is that since water is an element and since it is submerged in a pure element and not matter made of different elements, it would just sit there like an alkaline earth metal submerged in liquid Mercury. This would also explain why it doesn't instantly vacuum up all the air on the planet. Weee for crazy alternative physics.If water is still made of molecules it should still suck up the molecules as they hit the surface. If water isn't made up of moving molecules fine, but that means we have to resurrect the old caloric theories to explain heat. Which is, again, OK, but we should know we're doing it.

Even on a planet where all physics was perfectly normal except the Sphere, a Sphere would take a very long time to destroy all the air or water on a planet because it's so small and because it doesn't actively attract air or water into itself, instead relying on thermal motion to bring the air or water to it.


No. It's nothing. Not vaccuum. Not absence of something. The exact opposite of something. Nothing.

A big sphere o' nothing.I thought vacuum was nothing. I mean, it's what's left behind when you take all the somethings away, right?

However, it isn't enough to describe the Sphere as a ball of vacuum, because a ball of vacuum would get filled with stuff in short order. So instead it has to be some kind of hole, a spherical version of the Portable Hole. Anything that crosses its surface falls into the 'hole', gets sucked into an extradimensional space (probably an infinite unbounded one instead of a finite bounded one like the inside of a Bag of Holding).


So to make sure I have this strait, you are saying rather than the sphere being no-thing (as in the absence of something), you are addressing the concept of nothing as a quality, and the sphere of annihilation as something having an infinite, or nigh-infinite amount of this quality, which cancels out the quality of the existence of substance.

Would that not be equivalent to it being an aperture to the negative energy plane?Can't matter still exist on the negative energy plane?


Right, and that is stated because otherwise, we'd assume it diddn't, as per the norm of reality. Unless something is stated that otherwise defies real life physics, thats how it works. When something destroys things utterly, it creates a vaccum. Water will fill the vaccum. The water that filled it will be destroyed. The sphere is motionless in relation to the earth, ergo it continues the cycle ad infinite.Even so, it will take a long time for this to happen. It might already be going on without anyone realizing it. Or there might be an infinite 'source' of water somewhere in the ocean to make up for the destruction of water by the sphere.


And she didn't even become totally crippled.However, there are cases of people falling far enough to reach terminal velocity and surviving with injuries much less serious than hers. She may have fallen farther than anyone else, but she didn't necessarily hit the ground faster than those other people.


This is not complicated physics. This is basic Aristotelian physics on the same level of "if you push something, it will move" and "gravity exerts a pull on objects."Well, Aristotle would have said "if you push something, it will move according to its nature until it runs out of impetus and crashes to the ground because the essential nature of all solid objects is to be at the center of the Earth" and "what is this 'gravity'? Objects fall because it is their nature to do so, except for the heavenly bodies, which move in perfect circles and do not fall?"

Aristotle was more concerned with the metaphysics of motion than with anything we would call physics. However, your argument is correct as far as I'm concerned; I'm just not sure Aristotle would have bought it.


Water is affected by gravity. As long as you accept that gravity exists in the D&D universe, a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the ocean will drain the entire ocean unless something else prevents it.Seconded.


By a similar line of thinking, water at the bottom of the ocean is pushing down on the sphere. All the water that touches it is destroyed, so more water pushes on it. Then more and more, until a truly awesome vortex is created.The problem is that the rate at which water is being destroyed isn't really all that impressive on the scale of the ocean. There will be a vortex around the sphere, but it won't be as large or impressive as all that and might not even be perceptible from the surface if the Spehre is deep underwater.


Would the gods allow it? They don't appear personally to stop most things. They have heroes do that kind of thing. Besides, there has to be a god that would like this kind of devastation, much less opportunistic, short-sighted mortals.

How did it get there? Does it matter?Well, one god might well say "Yo. Hero! We've got a problem over here! Go round up half a dozen Everflowing Bottles of Water and dump them in the sea, or the fishies will be sleeping with you!"


[explains that pressure is the result of random molecular motion and that there are fast moving molecules in any substance at normal temperatures]...The average pressure on the human body at sea level is around 15-20 thousand killograms.You can't measure pressure in "killograms" any more than you can measure weight in inches, but other than this sentence everything you say is absolutely correct.


Edit: Also, a sphere could be weightless, but this doesn't mean it couldn't have relativistic mass (and exerts a graviational force). Ie. photons have momentum but they don't have rest mass, and objects gain more momentum as they move faster. Anyhow, the energy within the sphere would have to be huge, to have an effect (not unreasonable given its nature).If we want to invoke relativity, any object with zero rest mass must be moving at the speed of light or it will cease to exist. Not what we were looking for.

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-30, 06:51 AM
The Sphere isn't nothing in the way, say, Absolute Zero is nothing. The Sphere is nothing in the way negative heat would be nothing.

Let's call it negative existance. It goes right from being the absence of something to coming out the other side.

(And if you think hard vaccuum is literally nothing you can a lot to learn. It's very hard to find any appreciable volume of literally nothing. :smallwink:)

Kompera
2007-10-30, 07:02 AM
Dead gods can't do anything. That's why Aoskar doesn't grant his clerics spells anymore.
Luckily for the god, he/she/it is not dead. Merely "sucked into the void, gone, and utterly destroyed." And this is a state from which the gods are uniquely qualified to restore themselves: "Only the direct intervention of a deity can restore an annihilated character."


If we want to invoke relativity, any object with zero rest mass must be moving at the speed of light or it will cease to exist. Not what we were looking for.How about we invoke magic, instead? What is this relativity you seek to invoke, some kind of Outsider?

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-30, 07:03 AM
Luckily for the god, he/she/it is not dead. Merely "sucked into the void, gone, and utterly destroyed." And this is a state from which the god has the power to restore themselves: "Only the direct intervention of a deity can restore an annihilated character."

*sigh*

Just like a dead character can walk about and still fight, right? :smallsigh:

Kompera
2007-10-30, 07:15 AM
*sigh*

Just like a dead character can walk about and still fight, right? :smallsigh:Quite a bit unlike that. I'd never allow a character to walk about, fight, or whatever after dying. But gods are gods, and the power to restore things from the touch of the sphere is uniquely granted to gods. The state the Sphere imposes not being death at all, I'd see no reason why the god should be prevented from empowering his/her/its own return. Being "gone" doesn't prevent one, if one has the power, from coming back. And as for "utterly destroyed", that's a subjective value based on a point of view which exists within our universe. Which the god is no longer in.

Ulzgoroth
2007-10-30, 07:35 AM
Quite a bit unlike that. I'd never allow a character to walk about, fight, or whatever after dying. But gods are gods, and the power to restore things from the touch of the sphere is uniquely granted to gods. The state the Sphere imposes not being death at all, I'd see no reason why the god should be prevented from empowering his/her/its own return. Being "gone" doesn't prevent one, if one has the power, from coming back. And as for "utterly destroyed", that's a subjective value based on a point of view which exists within our universe. Which the god is no longer in.
I don't believe I'm familiar with the definition of 'utterly destroyed' which actually means 'is no longer in contact with your frame of reference'. As opposed to 'no longer exists in any sense or degree'.

Kompera
2007-10-30, 07:57 AM
I don't believe I'm familiar with the definition of 'utterly destroyed' which actually means 'is no longer in contact with your frame of reference'. As opposed to 'no longer exists in any sense or degree'.

Explain to me if you would, the practical difference, from the point of view of a person who exists within the "multiverse", between the two states you describe?

I'll help: There is no difference.
The "multiverse" contains everything with which you could hope to have a frame of reference with. Those things outside of that frame of reference are "gone, and utterly destroyed" to any of your senses or any power of perception you could possibly hope to apply. Non-existent, to your limited frame of reference. But the Sphere establishes that there do exist "hole[s] in the continuity of the multiverse." We can't hope to know what lies beyond. But the gods do. And, they can bring things back from that place.

Thus, a god can return itself from being within "a hole in the continuity of the multiverse", since gods are specifically and uniquely granted that ability.

sikyon
2007-10-30, 08:14 AM
You can't measure pressure in "killograms" any more than you can measure weight in inches, but other than this sentence everything you say is absolutely correct.

Fine, the pressure at sea level is about 100 kPa, which is 100 000 Newtons per square meter. The average adult human has about 1.5-2 square meters of skin, so really I meant the units in force. So "the force exerted by the atmospheric pressure is blah blah"




If we want to invoke relativity, any object with zero rest mass must be moving at the speed of light or it will cease to exist. Not what we were looking for.

Yes, but from which viewpoint? Take for example a box, with perfect mirrors inside of 2 sides of it. If you were to shine a beam of light at 1 mirror, and let it resonate back and forth between the two mirrors, the momentum of this beam of light would cancel out, and the box would not be moving. However, the box's relativistic mass would be increased from the highly energetic photons. Thus, from an outside observer, this box would be "heavier".



Dead gods can't do anything. That's why Aoskar doesn't grant his clerics spells anymore.

Clerics worshipping Aoskar -should- still get spells (I know they don't). Clerics get their spells not from gods per se, but from general worship. A Cleric can gain spells from worshiping an ideal. They don't even have to follow a god, so the death of a god should really not influence their power.


Also, all this talk about quantum phycis and predicted particles is getting more and more shakey. I would like to remind people that even such concepts as antimatter having positive mass have not been observed experimentally: exotic matter with negative mass has not been observed, and neither has hawking radiation (and with it the transmission of information from a black hole). You are talking about theoretical perdicitons, not observed phenomena.

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-30, 08:22 AM
Clerics worshipping Aoskar -should- still get spells (I know they don't). Clerics get their spells not from gods per se, but from general worship. A Cleric can gain spells from worshiping an ideal. They don't even have to follow a god, so the death of a god should really not influence their power.

Gods do grant spells. I've seen non-theistic clerics' clerical powers explained as coming from the Great Unknown, which is also used to describe the source of power of Overdeities (which are the source of power for deities).

Or maybe the Lady is just blocking all Aoskar's clerics from receiving spells. I wouldn't put it past Her Serenity.

Aquillion
2007-10-30, 08:41 AM
Gods do grant spells. I've seen non-theistic clerics' clerical powers explained as coming from the Great Unknown, which is also used to describe the source of power of Overdeities (which are the source of power for deities).

Or maybe the Lady is just blocking all Aoskar's clerics from receiving spells. I wouldn't put it past Her Serenity.Does she even have that power? Outside of Sigil, I mean--I'll grant she could probably keep a god's power out of Sigil. But I don't see how she could do it everywhere, especially if you buy into this basic "all clerics are actually clerics of ideals" argument.

sikyon
2007-10-30, 09:01 AM
Gods do grant spells. I've seen non-theistic clerics' clerical powers explained as coming from the Great Unknown, which is also used to describe the source of power of Overdeities (which are the source of power for deities).

Or maybe the Lady is just blocking all Aoskar's clerics from receiving spells. I wouldn't put it past Her Serenity.

Regardless, if a cleric's ideal dies, be that an abstract ideal or a god, their own worship should give them power. Unless they know the god is dead, or something, so they lose faith. Otherwise, I don't see any reason they can't get powers still. The source would just shift from the god to the great unknown (not that I'm buying that arguement just yet, since I don't know of it)

Funkyodor
2007-10-30, 09:20 AM
Well, we can infer that if a diety in AD&D can bring a Character back from the annihilation effect, that they should be able to bring any matter back as well. Especially if that diety is a diety of the matter sucked in like Diety of the Sea. I imagine that it must be like ice fishing.
"Yo Triton, what you doing at the 'Hole' today?"
"Oh, just pulling back water this thing keeps chugging down... What the hey! This bucket is a little heavy to be just water. Maybe I got something Cool! Aw man, it's just a person."
"Oh mighty Triton! Thank you for answering my prayer for rescue from the infinite abyss!"
"Umm, yeah... I Triton have rescued another of my loyal followers. Spread the word."

TranquilRage
2007-10-30, 09:40 AM
A nice simple solution is reached when you consider that in DnD worlds, Magic overrides the normal rules of physics. Looking at Spell levels you can see that the greater the magic involved, the greater the effect on the world.

So, you have a levitating sphere wrapped in a disintegration field, eventually it would reach a depth where the amount of material needing to be destroyed each second was greater than the magic was capable of doing. When that happens, BANG, POP or Fizzle. Whatever.

You could lower it slowly over many many many years, but it wouldn't have a huge effect. And once someone found out about it i'm sure they would counter its effects in some way (decanters of endless water etc)

Telonius
2007-10-30, 11:14 AM
Let's assume the sphere destroys everything it touches at the same rate. If it isn't magically suspended, it will destroy the ground it touches at approximately the same rate as the water. It will slowly sink, until it reaches the planet core and there's nothing to draw it further center-wards. Water will slowly follow it down to the center. There may be some earthquakes as the planet shifts to fill in the hole it leaves. But eventually, the planet will have a Sphere of Annihilation at the center of it, surrounded by the mantle, etc, which has (in its superheated state) flowed to replace the empty space left by the sphere's progress.

I'm not sure what happens next. Either the mantle forms a shell around the sphere, providing a new center of gravity, and the sphere stays there forever; or the sphere eventually draws in the mantle as it flows towards the new center of gravity, eventually causing the planet to shatter.

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-30, 11:46 AM
A nice simple solution is reached when you consider that in DnD worlds, Magic overrides the normal rules of physics. Looking at Spell levels you can see that the greater the magic involved, the greater the effect on the world.

So, you have a levitating sphere wrapped in a disintegration field, eventually it would reach a depth where the amount of material needing to be destroyed each second was greater than the magic was capable of doing. When that happens, BANG, POP or Fizzle. Whatever.

You could lower it slowly over many many many years, but it wouldn't have a huge effect. And once someone found out about it i'm sure they would counter its effects in some way (decanters of endless water etc)

It's an artifact.

Deific-level magical power.

You can't overload a Sphere!

Eldritch_Ent
2007-10-30, 11:48 AM
True, I forgot about that darn gravity, but still- while gravity might affect the medium they are in, Gravity doesn't affect spheres of annihalation themselves. They remain in a fixed position in relation to the material plane unless moved through some external force, so unless they were pushed down by some sort of burrowing or intangible being, it wouldn't sink like that. They just don't move downwards spontaneously.

Mewtarthio
2007-10-30, 12:11 PM
I'll help: There is no difference.
The "multiverse" contains everything with which you could hope to have a frame of reference with. Those things outside of that frame of reference are "gone, and utterly destroyed" to any of your senses or any power of perception you could possibly hope to apply. Non-existent, to your limited frame of reference. But the Sphere establishes that there do exist "hole[s] in the continuity of the multiverse." We can't hope to know what lies beyond. But the gods do. And, they can bring things back from that place.

But how can we know that gods know what lies beyond the Sphere of Annihilation? How can we know what happens to anyone, including gods, when they touch a hole in the multiverse? Maybe their bodies are damaged as they fall through in such a way that it is as though they took an infinite amount of damage: They could easily just be dead on the other side. For all we know, the gods can't bring people back from the unreality of Sphere: Maybe they just create an entirely new soul that appears exactly like the victim prior to falling through.

Ulzgoroth
2007-10-30, 12:41 PM
Explain to me if you would, the practical difference, from the point of view of a person who exists within the "multiverse", between the two states you describe?

I'll help: There is no difference.
The "multiverse" contains everything with which you could hope to have a frame of reference with. Those things outside of that frame of reference are "gone, and utterly destroyed" to any of your senses or any power of perception you could possibly hope to apply. Non-existent, to your limited frame of reference. But the Sphere establishes that there do exist "hole[s] in the continuity of the multiverse." We can't hope to know what lies beyond. But the gods do. And, they can bring things back from that place.

Thus, a god can return itself from being within "a hole in the continuity of the multiverse", since gods are specifically and uniquely granted that ability.
This is directly self-contradictory. Even if we grant some implied 'from the perspective of the multiverse' attached to that "utterly destroyed", which there is no reason to do, there is certainly no 'utterly destroyed except for gods' there. Which means that whatever it does to a god has to at the very least prevent them from bringing themselves back. There is a very distinct difference between 'utterly destroyed' and 'gone for 30 seconds while they figure out what happened' from the perspective of the multiverse.

Let's assume the sphere destroys everything it touches at the same rate. If it isn't magically suspended, it will destroy the ground it touches at approximately the same rate as the water. It will slowly sink, until it reaches the planet core and there's nothing to draw it further center-wards. Water will slowly follow it down to the center. There may be some earthquakes as the planet shifts to fill in the hole it leaves. But eventually, the planet will have a Sphere of Annihilation at the center of it, surrounded by the mantle, etc, which has (in its superheated state) flowed to replace the empty space left by the sphere's progress.
It doesn't sink. Not that it couldn't eat through the ground as if it weren't there, but the sphere is not subject to gravity. Other than the telekinetic pushing, it moves about the same as an immovable rod.

Yes, you could mess up a planet pretty badly by putting an SoE at the core, but it wouldn't be easy to get there.

ColdBrew
2007-10-30, 02:38 PM
Yes, you could mess up a planet pretty badly by putting an SoE at the core, but it wouldn't be easy to get there.
Earth Glide + Necklace of Adaptation?

Ulzgoroth
2007-10-30, 04:03 PM
Earth Glide + Necklace of Adaptation?
Earth glide might save you from the pressure. Neither of those makes you immune to what would probably be days of immersion in molten stone. Maybe there's an easy solution to that too?

Belteshazzar
2007-10-30, 05:02 PM
Earth Glide+ Adaptation+ Ring of Fire Immunity= Expensive but passable inner-planetary travel.

It is my ruling that when a deity is killed by such a method as a Sphere of Annihilation they would do what all dead deities do. Sleep in the Astral Seas and if you don't have a body left (as in this case) you may become a Vestige.

Kompera
2007-10-30, 07:16 PM
This is directly self-contradictory. Even if we grant some implied 'from the perspective of the multiverse' attached to that "utterly destroyed", which there is no reason to do, there is certainly no 'utterly destroyed except for gods' there. Which means that whatever it does to a god has to at the very least prevent them from bringing themselves back. There is a very distinct difference between 'utterly destroyed' and 'gone for 30 seconds while they figure out what happened' from the perspective of the multiverse.
There is no contradiction here at all. It's just a matter of wrapping your thoughts around the concepts involved. Use your imagination a bit, it'll make it easier.

There is no need for an "utterly destroyed except for gods" clause, the god is indeed "utterly destroyed", from the perspective of any being with senses or perceptions limited to the "multiverse". Gone without a trace. Undetectable via any means. And then the god returns to the "multiverse", because it has that ability.

Unless you want to rule that the ability of a deity to "restore an annihilated character" is in fact the recreation of that character as it was at the moment immediately prior to its contact with the sphere, then there is no contradiction at all. In any other case, the character is removed from the multiverse, and the deity brings it back. Allowing the deity to do so for itself may not be intuitive, but it's not an unreasonable conclusion, either.



Here's one for the "game world must follow real physics" folks. The operation of the SoA is described as such: "Any matter that comes in contact with a sphere is instantly sucked into the void, gone, and utterly destroyed." In any game in which I've seen a SoA used, this meant that a character touched by the SoA vanishes instantly and entirely, not that the portion of the character touched is gone. This interpretation, if accepted, brings up a few physics problems. So, the SoA touches the finger, or chest, or whatever, or the player, and suddenly a 6' player vanishes into a 2' sphere. Great. Next, the sphere is used against an Iron Golem, a Large size construct. And again, the Golem vanishes instantly and entirely into a 2' sphere. Next, the SoA is used against a Tarrasque, a Colossal size creature. And again, the Terrasque vanishes instantly and entirely into a 2' sphere. Very interesting properties here, no?

For any continuity to exist, one would have to say that no matter the size of the object touched, it vanishes instantly and entirely. Which could lead one to the conclusion that to touch the surface of a planet is to instantly and entirely destroy it. Liquids and gases may have an "out" from this ruling, as they could be considered to not be a contiguous whole. But any solid or series of connected solids (unless a destroyed character's sword or backpack, for example, falls to the ground instead of being destroyed with the character even if they don't touch the SoA directly) should be subject to the same ruling. Bye-bye, planet!

Kompera
2007-10-30, 07:18 PM
It is my ruling that when a deity is killed by such a method as a Sphere of Annihilation they would do what all dead deities do. Sleep in the Astral Seas and if you don't have a body left (as in this case) you may become a Vestige.Killed? Where does it say that anything touched by the SoA is "killed"?

Yuki Akuma
2007-10-30, 07:36 PM
Killed? Where does it say that anything touched by the SoA is "killed"?

You're... you're doing this on purpose, aren't you?

Ulzgoroth
2007-10-30, 07:37 PM
There is no contradiction here at all. It's just a matter of wrapping your thoughts around the concepts involved. Use your imagination a bit, it'll make it easier.

There is no need for an "utterly destroyed except for gods" clause, the god is indeed "utterly destroyed", from the perspective of any being with senses or perceptions limited to the "multiverse". Gone without a trace. Undetectable via any means. And then the god returns to the "multiverse", because it has that ability.

Unless you want to rule that the ability of a deity to "restore an annihilated character" is in fact the recreation of that character as it was at the moment immediately prior to its contact with the sphere, then there is no contradiction at all. In any other case, the character is removed from the multiverse, and the deity brings it back. Allowing the deity to do so for itself may not be intuitive, but it's not an unreasonable conclusion, either.
I understand perfectly what you are saying happens. Your insulting advice is not needed.

However, I still do not see how you can understand the words 'utterly destroyed' to include a state that is not only reversible but capable of reversing itself. That is to say, despite being 'utterly destroyed' and thus (at the very least) in no way interacting with the multiverse, you have the god acting on the multiverse by restoring itself. If being utterly destroyed doesn't preclude that kind of thing, I'd better stop plotting to utterly destroy my enemies, and come up with something more, um, utter. Or possibly more destructive?

For any continuity to exist, one would have to say that no matter the size of the object touched, it vanishes instantly and entirely. Which could lead one to the conclusion that to touch the surface of a planet is to instantly and entirely destroy it. Liquids and gases may have an "out" from this ruling, as they could be considered to not be a contiguous whole. But any solid or series of connected solids (unless a destroyed character's sword or backpack, for example, falls to the ground instead of being destroyed with the character even if they don't touch the SoA directly) should be subject to the same ruling. Bye-bye, planet!
Hm, that's a good case. Depends on the way you do it.

It says sucked in. One could take that to mean that once something touches its surface, it is effectively dragged in quickly and with irresistible force. I'd say this makes more sense than the alternate 'propagating disintegrate' implementation where you just puff out of existence on contact. Then if you put it in contact with the ground, it pulls up some dirt, but the dirt naturally pulls apart rather than dragging the entire planet in with it. If you touch it to bedrock, it probably tears away and destroys a chunk. Lighter and less anchored objects, like adventurers or iron golems, won't offer enough resistance to the pull to be torn to pieces.

There isn't anything in the description that precludes the interpretation of it destroying the world on contact, though.

Kompera
2007-10-30, 08:26 PM
However, I still do not see how you can understand the words 'utterly destroyed' to include a state that is not only reversible but capable of reversing itself. That is to say, despite being 'utterly destroyed' and thus (at the very least) in no way interacting with the multiverse, you have the god acting on the multiverse by restoring itself. If being utterly destroyed doesn't preclude that kind of thing, I'd better stop plotting to utterly destroy my enemies, and come up with something more, um, utter. Or possibly more destructive?

I didn't mean to offer any insult, only to try to show that there is a broader perspective which can be applied and which is not in any way contradictory to the description of the SoA. And which is quite a bit more fun, also. Ruling that SoA contact = death is the easy conclusion to draw, but I find (again, no insult intended) that perspective to be needlessly limited.

As for the plotting to destroy your enemies more utterly or in a more destructive fashion, using a SoA is probably a safe bet for this, unless your enemies are either gods or are on good terms with gods. If your enemy is the High Priest of Kord, you might be better off choosing some alternative means of ridding yourself of this foe which allows you to keep or destroy their possessions, rather than facing the restored High Priest with all their gear intact again after Kord looks for his favored worshiper and, not finding him within the multiverse, decides to check the unknown spaces beyond connected to by Spheres of Annihilation.

Collin152
2007-10-30, 08:48 PM
Earth glide might save you from the pressure. Neither of those makes you immune to what would probably be days of immersion in molten stone. Maybe there's an easy solution to that too?

Iron Body will save you from the pressure and the lack of air, as well as other things.

Mewtarthio
2007-10-30, 08:59 PM
There is no contradiction here at all. It's just a matter of wrapping your thoughts around the concepts involved. Use your imagination a bit, it'll make it easier.

There is no need for an "utterly destroyed except for gods" clause, the god is indeed "utterly destroyed", from the perspective of any being with senses or perceptions limited to the "multiverse". Gone without a trace. Undetectable via any means. And then the god returns to the "multiverse", because it has that ability.

Unless you want to rule that the ability of a deity to "restore an annihilated character" is in fact the recreation of that character as it was at the moment immediately prior to its contact with the sphere, then there is no contradiction at all. In any other case, the character is removed from the multiverse, and the deity brings it back. Allowing the deity to do so for itself may not be intuitive, but it's not an unreasonable conclusion, either.

I can understand what you're saying (in essence, that a god's ability to restore an annihilated creature implies that it has access to the area outside the multiverse and can therefore get himself back if he ever goes there), but you make two major assumptions that I don't believe can be assumed:

First off, you assume that an annihilated character can survive the process (eg he is simply dropped out of the multiverse). This is your most reasonable assumption, since gods have great powers. I'd assume that any mortal forced through a two-foot-diameter hole would die, but a god might survive that. The trouble is that the sphere may esist in at least four spatial dimensions, effectively being a hypersphere that leads outside the multiverse. For all we know of the sphere, it's possible that anything travelling through it gets manipulated in ways that we three-dimensional creatures can't fathom: At the very least, I'd expect it to get imploded. And then there's the fact that whatever falls through the sphere fallls outside the multiverse. It's possible that the laws of physics are different wherever the sphere leads. A victim of the sphere might simply explode on the other side.

Second, you assume the gods have power outside the multiverse and are able to use it. Even in the default cosmology, there are places where the gods are powerless (eg The Spire). DnD magic quite clearly violates several rules of real life physics, so we know that at least our world is not conducive to magic. Magic, even deific powers, likely requires the laws of physics in the multiverse to be just right to work. Trying to use magic in the world outside the multiverse may be tantamount to trying to walk in a world without friction. Perhaps the gods know enough about that other world to send a call that leads lost souls back to the main cosmology, or perhaps "restoring" a victim of the sphere is nothing more that recreating that victim from scratch. Furthermore, we don't even know that time works "properly" outside the multiverse. A god that falls through a sphere may be effectively frozen in stasis for eternity. There are planes where time runs at different speeds even in the main cosmology, after all.


As for the plotting to destroy your enemies more utterly or in a more destructive fashion, using a SoA is probably a safe bet for this, unless your enemies are either gods or are on good terms with gods. If your enemy is the High Priest of Kord, you might be better off choosing some alternative means of ridding yourself of this foe which allows you to keep or destroy their possessions, rather than facing the restored High Priest with all their gear intact again after Kord looks for his favored worshiper and, not finding him within the multiverse, decides to check the unknown spaces beyond connected to by Spheres of Annihilation.

I think if you're up against someone who's so valuable to their god that said god is willing to use Salient Divine Abilities on their behalf, you're pretty much screwed anyway.

MCerberus
2007-10-30, 09:01 PM
Here's one: what happens when two SoA touch? Do they just merge? One consume the other? Do you get a bigger SoA? Do they go critical if they touch?

Kompera
2007-10-30, 09:24 PM
[snipped for brevity]I can understand what you're saying (in essence, that a god's ability to restore an annihilated creature implies that it has access to the area outside the multiverse and can therefore get himself back if he ever goes there), but you make two major assumptions that I don't believe can be assumed:

For all we know of the sphere, it's possible that anything travelling through it gets manipulated in ways that we three-dimensional creatures can't fathom: At the very least, I'd expect it to get imploded. And then there's the fact that whatever falls through the sphere fallls outside the multiverse. It's possible that the laws of physics are different wherever the sphere leads. A victim of the sphere might simply explode on the other side.

Second, you assume the gods have power outside the multiverse and are able to use it. A god that falls through a sphere may be effectively frozen in stasis for eternity. There are planes where time runs at different speeds even in the main cosmology, after all.

I like the way you think. And I'll grant that your examples are easily as possible as my own. Since we have no way of knowing what lies beyond the multiverse, we can only speculate. Exploding/imploding/crystallizing in stasis are all valid potentials, but so is any other conceivable possibility, including many where bending, folding, spindling, or mutilating of those touched by the sphere (god or mortal) does not occur.

Ultimately, each DM must decide for themselves what properties the spaces beyond the Sphere has. Not in great detail, since those removed to these spaces can have no hope of interacting with any part of the multiverse, but a general concept. My goal was merely to try to refute that this must include the death of those touched. Death is an option, sure. But it's the easy way out, and closes off a lot of interesting possibilities.

Aquillion
2007-10-30, 11:41 PM
I think if you're up against someone who's so valuable to their god that said god is willing to use Salient Divine Abilities on their behalf, you're pretty much screwed anyway.Not necessarily. If I was DMing a game and felt that I absolutely had to pull a specific BBEG back from a sphere of annihilation, there's lots of ways I could do it without making it look like they have a perpetual deity in their pocket.

For instance, they could have made some sort of deal or bet in advance with a deity (or finally agreed to it in their last breath before they were sucked in), so that if they're defeated they receive aid in exchange for some horrible cost. This has the advantage that you're not totally negating the player's victory over them--the BBEG pays a heavy cost, and can only come back with some horrible sign of what happened to them. Even though they'll be mechanically stronger (they have to be, to fight probably higher-level PCs) they can come off as suffering or less human or whatever. Of course, their deal with the deity is a one-time thing... but when the players see them next, they're the accursed half-decayed champion of deity XYZ, with half their body gone (the deity was only able to recover part of them.)

TranquilRage
2007-11-01, 04:21 AM
It's an artifact.

Deific-level magical power.

You can't overload a Sphere!

Its a MINOR artefact. And since deities have levels, the amount of magic they wield cant considered to be infinite.

So yes, it can. It just takes a lot.