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Heliomance
2008-11-15, 07:22 AM
So we're level 10, and the DM has somehow maneuvered us into effectively unleashing armageddon on the town we're based in, as a lesser of two evils scenario. We're going round activating vortices to the inner planes. This means that the affinity for the relevant elements is increased in the town. So far, we've done negative energy and fire. Negative energy made pretty much everyone in the town slightly ill, meaning they wrapped up warm, huddled up at home, and kept the fires stoked. Then we did fire. This naturally made fires burn hotter, and caused some house fires. These fires were very hard to put out, due to the fact that everything had an increased affinity to fire - there were even some puddles burning.

Next on the list is earth. I think we can reasonably assume this will cause earthquakes and property damage. Then we have air, which will almost certainly cause tornadoes and such, and lastly water. By this point I would not be at all surprised if the only structures left standing were by the river, and they will have most of the population of the city - all ill - huddled in them. At this point, my unholy distance longbow to a ten foot pole the river floods.

So my question is this: How can we best protect the town from the effects? Party casters are a druid, a sorceror, a wizard, and a bard/paladin. We're probably the highest level people in the town, and we can't expect the cooperation of anyone over level 3 or so.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-11-15, 07:27 AM
Earthquakes and rock slides are way too hard to protect against, imho. Cast Control Winds and Control Weather for fighting air, and Control Water for the water. Also, I'd be trying healing spells to deal with the negative energy.

Is there a reason you didn't evacuate the town, BTW? Seems easier than just protecting it.

Heliomance
2008-11-15, 07:32 AM
Because for the first two, we didn't realise the full ramifications of what we were doing. Also, the campaign bigbad lives in the town, and we're trying to hide from him what we're doing.

Chineselegolas
2008-11-15, 08:15 AM
...Also, the campaign bigbad lives in the town...
1. Okay, first thing find a god who is okay with the greater good.
2. Amplify the effects, wiping out the town and the big bad
3. ???
4. Profit, it was for the greater good remember

In seriousness the aforementioned spells will be of use.

Heliomance
2008-11-15, 08:35 AM
We have a paladin, that's not gonna go down well :P
We know exactly who the bad guy is, and we could probably take him quite easily. The problem is the political situation. We have no proof of any crimes he's committed, and he's a noble.

Also, the DM's hinted that he might be a load-bearing boss, and that if we take him down too early, the whole city might just go boom anyway. This guy has spent the last six months funding a reconstruction campaign to build the city's walls into a perfect pentagon...

JeminiZero
2008-11-15, 08:48 AM
Next on the list is earth. I think we can reasonably assume this will cause earthquakes and property damage. Then we have air, which will almost certainly cause tornadoes and such, and lastly water. By this point I would not be at all surprised if the only structures left standing were by the river, and they will have most of the population of the city - all ill - huddled in them. At this point, my unholy distance longbow to a ten foot pole the river floods.


Could you could try and scramble the list? I mean executing water now would at least help fight the fires. And once the town has become a sickly flooded swamp, execute earth, and hope that the softened swamp soil will absorb some of the quakes impact.

Other than that, at level 10, there are limitations to how far you can mitigate the impact of disasters. Your best bet might be to have the townsfolk prepare themselves without revealing out your plot.

My (somewhat crazy) suggestion, is to find some rambling lunatic within town. At your level, you should be able to access some spells that affect dreams. Use that to give him prophetic visions on what disaster is to come, and watch as he does your job of warning the townfolk.

Those that didn't listen to him at first, will probably start believing him after that prophesied earthquake occurs, and will prepare for the tornado and flood accordingly. The upshot is that as long as you cover your tracks, the villain won't know you are the ones giving him the dreams, and won't uncover your plot. At the same time, the villain also cannot extract any useful information from the raving lunatic (it may help if you include red herrings in his prophetic dreams to throw villain offtrack).

bosssmiley
2008-11-15, 08:53 AM
So my question is this: How can we best protect the town from the effects? Party casters are a druid, a sorcerer, a wizard, and a bard/paladin. We're probably the highest level people in the town, and we can't expect the cooperation of anyone over level 3 or so.

Do what everyone with more sense than Californians does when a series of natural disasters all occur in the same area in a short period of time: evacuate the area.

Run. Never look back. Erase the name of the place ("Boatmurdered" you say?) from your maps and never speak of it again. :smallamused:

Heliomance
2008-11-15, 08:59 AM
Could you could try and scramble the list? I mean executing water now would at least help fight the fires. And once the town has become a sickly flooded swamp, execute earth, and hope that the softened swamp soil will absorb some of the quakes impact.


We're on a time limit, and we're being given the macguffins to activate the vortices in the order the DM thinks would be most amusing. If we don't get them all done before the BBEG starts his plans, he gains Real Ultimate Power. We're doing this to allow our friendly neighbourhood shamans to interfere with the BBEG's ritual.

Drakefall
2008-11-15, 09:49 AM
Hmm... well, on the plus side, at least all those pentagon walls will be destroyed. Specific shapes, especially ones involving fives and sevens, are never a good thing.

Heliomance
2008-11-15, 09:59 AM
Don't count on it. The effects of activating the vortices is focused and contained purely inside the town limits. There's no effect outside the town, I susepct the shamans we're working with are using the walls as a magical barrier as well.

Flickerdart
2008-11-15, 10:15 AM
Take a little side quest and play the demolition man. You're the only ones that know the effects don't spread that far. You're doing Earth next, right? Get the Druid a scroll of Earthquake, when the city is suffering sneak by the wall and unleash some Earthquaking of your own! Who's to say that the earthquakes were different ones?

Dervag
2008-11-15, 10:26 AM
Do what everyone with more sense than Californians does when a series of natural disasters all occur in the same area in a short period of time: evacuate the area.

Run. Never look back. Erase the name of the place from your maps and never speak of it again. :smallamused:I'd have already done this after the firestorms and vortices of soul-sucking antilife.

Hal
2008-11-15, 11:42 AM
What about the positive energy plane? If negative energy made them sick, won't positive energy nullify those effects?

As another idea, your wizard could prepare a bunch of Rope Trick spells every day to hide away as many townspeople as possible. If nothing else, this might protect them during the initial effects of opening up a gate. If the wizard and sorcerer can get a bunch of scrolls for this, all the better.

Heliomance
2008-11-15, 12:39 PM
Wizard doesn't know Rope Trick,and it's a fairly low-magic setting - magic items and scrolls and such are fairly hard to come by unless you make them yourself, especially in a town on the northern frontier that pretty much only exists to trade with the orcish tribes.

As for positive energy, we reckon that's the last one on the list. The five vortices we're activating are spread outside the city, all equidistant from it, all directly out from one of the points of the pentagon. The city is effectively the centre of a giant pentagram with the elemental vortices at the points. Once we've activated them all, we're pretty sure the shamans are going to create a new positive energy vortex underneath the centre of the city. We're hoping that it's not strong enough to make people explode.

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-15, 01:02 PM
What spells do you have access to? And do you have a bag of holding?

Cause you could just have everyone in the town grapple eachother, which let's you fit all of them in a single 5 foot square, and then hit them with a Resilient Sphere. They would be perfectly safe for the next 10 miniutes, then drop the sphere and they can start rebuilding.

Stupendous_Man
2008-11-15, 01:07 PM
Hmm... well, on the plus side, at least all those pentagon walls will be destroyed. Specific shapes, especially ones involving fives and sevens, are never a good thing.
Cyclopentene.... my god, cyclopentene....

Heliomance
2008-11-15, 01:13 PM
What spells do you have access to? And do you have a bag of holding?

Cause you could just have everyone in the town grapple eachother, which let's you fit all of them in a single 5 foot square, and then hit them with a Resilient Sphere. They would be perfectly safe for the next 10 minutes, then drop the sphere and they can start rebuilding.

Right. Somehow I think that the DM, if confronted by the suggestion that we could get everyone in one 5-foot square if they grappled would go "No. Because that's ridiculous." And our only extradimensional storage space at the moment is an HHH which is holding three artifacts of utter evil. There's nothing else going in that bag.

Drakefall
2008-11-15, 01:14 PM
Cyclopentene.... my god, cyclopentene....

No... it can't be... not... not a CIRCLE!!!! :eek:

Curse you pi function! Curse you!!!

Quellian-dyrae
2008-11-15, 01:41 PM
This story sounds like it could very easily be a classic "get the heroes to do my job for me" move. How well do you know these shamans? How trustworthy are their intentions? What do you know about the BBEG's ritual?

I'd say your safest bet is indeed evacuating the town. If the BBEG shaped the walls like that, there's every likelihood that he needs to be in the town to do its thing. Frankly, it doesn't matter if the guy knows what you're doing, as long as it gets done. You've suggested that he's not really a threat to you in battle; take the initiative, take the control out of his hands, and if he tries to stop you, either humiliate him (if he tries socially; you have a bard/paladin so outdoing his social checks should be very doable) or eradicate him (if he tries martially).

Even failing that, just bringing him down is probably still a better option than opening the vortices. You can try this through normal legal and social means; even if you don't have concrete proof of his crimes, I assume that A) you have enough circumstantial evidence that your party is fully convinced, B) you're big-time, well-respected heroes in this town, and C) your paladin/bard has the same social skills I assumed it had above. Call on the shamans as witnesses. Even if you can't get a warrant for arrest/execution, you should be able to prompt a detailed investigation. Use it to get the proof you need as well as to sabotage or prevent his ritual. Even open combat is probably preferable to continuing your current path; better to break a few laws and accept the possibility that the town will be destroyed rather than follow through with the course that will certainly destroy it.

Once that's all done, go through the quests to get the other macguffins so that no one else can open these vortexes, so your DM hasn't wasted any time it put into planning the missions! (And so you don't miss out on the XP, of course).

Erom
2008-11-15, 02:50 PM
Yeah, this sounds like the DM is feeding you into a trap, and it's maybe time to change the game. Depending on your DM and how railroady they are, you might have a hard time pulling this off, but after seeing how dangerous these portals are, I would say "cure is worse than the disease" and go full-assault on the noble BBEG. Since he's the noble, you'll probably be branded as criminals, hunted by the royal guard, and run out of town. That's ok - let yourselves take the fall for killing an "innocent" noble. You'll have saved the town without opening these portals and killing the townsfolk, and now you have an exciting "running from the law" thing going that no doubt will make for an interesting continuation of the campaign.

Heliomance
2008-11-15, 02:59 PM
This story sounds like it could very easily be a classic "get the heroes to do my job for me" move. How well do you know these shamans? How trustworthy are their intentions? What do you know about the BBEG's ritual?
We don't know much at all, actually. They're orcs, and we're honorary members of the tribe, so we don't think they're going to screw us over. On the other hand, they're playing their cards close to their chests. About the BBEG's ritual, even less. We know he consorts with devils, we know he's ordered a whole bunch of stuff for a coronation (this town doesn't have a king, it's run by a council of nobles), we know that whatever it is it's going down in about a week, we know it involves the vortices we're going round altering, we know we found a massive cast iron throne, crown and sceptre at the fire vortex. We suspect he's either trying to become a devil, or summon and crown a devil prince or something. The point of what we're doing is to enable the shamans to create a positive energy vortex beneath the city to interfere with the BBEG's ritual. Interrupted rituals have fun backlash effects that usually involve whoever was attempting the ritual ending up dead.


I'd say your safest bet is indeed evacuating the town. If the BBEG shaped the walls like that, there's every likelihood that he needs to be in the town to do its thing. Frankly, it doesn't matter if the guy knows what you're doing, as long as it gets done. You've suggested that he's not really a threat to you in battle; take the initiative, take the control out of his hands, and if he tries to stop you, either humiliate him (if he tries socially; you have a bard/paladin so outdoing his social checks should be very doable) or eradicate him (if he tries martially).
He's a level 9 caster, we've been eating those for breakfast since level 4 :) His main strength is political, he's managed to make himself politically almost unassailable and probably the richest man in the city. The other thing is that while we could take him in direct battle, homebrew ritual magic rules mean he is quite capable of summoning enough devils to really ruin our day if he wants to stop us badly enough.


Even failing that, just bringing him down is probably still a better option than opening the vortices. You can try this through normal legal and social means; even if you don't have concrete proof of his crimes, I assume that A) you have enough circumstantial evidence that your party is fully convinced, B) you're big-time, well-respected heroes in this town, and C) your paladin/bard has the same social skills I assumed it had above. Call on the shamans as witnesses. Even if you can't get a warrant for arrest/execution, you should be able to prompt a detailed investigation. Use it to get the proof you need as well as to sabotage or prevent his ritual. Even open combat is probably preferable to continuing your current path; better to break a few laws and accept the possibility that the town will be destroyed rather than follow through with the course that will certainly destroy it.

The shamans are orcs, I find it unlikely their testimony will be accepted against the highly respected human noble who has plenty of money to bribe people with. We have plenty of circumstantial evidence, though I can't remember it all now. Certainly we're all convinced he is the BBEG. We are respected heroes, yes, and have been awarded the titles of Marshal of the City. Our party leader is High Marshal. The trouble is, we have a Paladin. He won't consider anything that goes against the city laws without clear and unambiguous evidence. He's as convinced of the guy's guilt as the rest of us, but the BBEG has been very careful to keep his hands clean. He's never attacked us in any way that could be traced back to him such that the accusation would stand up in court - mostly he summons devils at us. We're really sick of hellcats.


Once that's all done, go through the quests to get the other macguffins so that no one else can open these vortexes, so your DM hasn't wasted any time it put into planning the missions! (And so you don't miss out on the XP, of course).

We don't have to quest to get the macguffins, the shamans are making them. The quests we do are to take each macguffin to the relevant vortex and place it on a shrine there, which alters the vortex such that the shamans can use it for their purposes - and results in the city gaining an increased affinity for that element Unfortunately, this doesn't alter them such that the BBEG can't use them for his purposes.

Doomsy
2008-11-15, 03:52 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong.

You guys can eat a level 9 BBEG for breakfast.

He is probably the toughest thing in the town, if your DM is playing by regular bad= power rules.

I would calmly tell the people what I am about to, that they have no way to stop me, and to run. Your moral obligation stops there. If the BBEG comes out to stop you because you've blown your cover - wee! You get to kill him. If he is loadbearing, the town was screwed anyway and you've given them all a chance rather than have them run the gauntlet o' elemental doom and then wreck their loadbearing boss. There is no real way to covertly evacuate a town anyway or shelter them from the effects you are talking about. At least this way you've tried.

I mean, it is not like you're going to have a lot of survivors after all of this to begin with. I do second the suspicion you are getting it from both sides, though.

AslanCross
2008-11-15, 05:34 PM
Quench is a 3rd-level Druid spell that extinguishes nonmagical fires. Its area is one 20-foot cube per level, so you have ten of those to work with when the druid casts it. It's supposed to work instantly on nonmagical fires, while it requires a dispel check against magical fires. That deals with the fire problem.

If you have someone who can create wands of cure light wounds, that would probably help counteract the illness problems.

Heliomance
2008-11-15, 09:19 PM
Paladin wouldn't believe our moral obligation has ended. The guy's exalted pretty much, he's not gonna be satisfied unless we've done everything in our power to protect the townsfolk. While he is very well roleplayed, and the girl playing him is lovely, his presence in the party has made things a whole lot more complicated.

Danin
2008-11-15, 09:59 PM
Well, I know that I would consider simply removing the BBEG from the picture. Ambush him, incapacitate him, take him outside the city and kill him (Ideally negating the whole load bearing thing) or just use stone shape to make a hidden room, chain him up there with a ring of sustenance, a gag, and hands sovereign glued to the wall. Stone shape the entrance shut and leave him. If the Paladin has any complaints, ask him whats worse: Stepping beyond the law once and risking his life by committing a crime, or knowingly sacrificing dozens if not hundreds or thousands of lives? Would the paladin's ethics really let hundreds die so that he can feel as though he didn't violate his code? Let them die so that he can feel like he never has stepped beyond what he was comfortable with?

As for leaving the guy there, well, it may be evil-ish, but you could always come back once you know atonement.

As for stopping an earthquake, well, you don't. Just make sure that you have prepared some place that will be reasonably safe when it happens for people to flee too. Have the druid prepare quench a lot, and control wind and water for the others, respectively.

Meat Shield
2008-11-15, 10:31 PM
Paladin wouldn't believe our moral obligation has ended. The guy's exalted pretty much, he's not gonna be satisfied unless we've done everything in our power to protect the townsfolk. While he is very well roleplayed, and the girl playing him is lovely, his presence in the party has made things a whole lot more complicated.

Well, good for her. Being the hero is not supposed to be all sunshine and roses. Sometimes it gets tough, and you have to get your hands dirty and make choices where neither option is a good one.

On the other hand, if the rest of the party is only in it for the glory and riches, then it behooves you to say 'See ya, toots!' and get your little caster butts outta there.

Nohwl
2008-11-15, 10:36 PM
We have a paladin, that's not gonna go down well :P
We know exactly who the bad guy is, and we could probably take him quite easily. The problem is the political situation. We have no proof of any crimes he's committed, and he's a noble.

could you make up evidence and accuse him based on that?

FoE
2008-11-15, 10:44 PM
Sounds like you're screwed no matter what you do. So here's my solution:

Kill everyone. The townspeople, the orcs, the BBEG ... everyone.

Your DM will never try to paint you into a corner again.

SurlySeraph
2008-11-15, 11:08 PM
Sounds like you're screwed no matter what you do. So here's my solution:

Kill everyone. The townspeople, the orcs, the BBEG ... everyone.

Your DM will never try to paint you into a corner again.

No! Bad! He should listen to the nice DM and stay on the rails. Because when you go off the rails, you get punished.

Doomsy
2008-11-15, 11:13 PM
Paladin wouldn't believe our moral obligation has ended. The guy's exalted pretty much, he's not gonna be satisfied unless we've done everything in our power to protect the townsfolk. While he is very well roleplayed, and the girl playing him is lovely, his presence in the party has made things a whole lot more complicated.

Then explain to him how if you keep going, you kill all of the townspeople - load bearing boss+ gauntlet of elements= lot of people dead.

If you tell them and tell them to run before picking up the pace, you blow your cover and flush the BBEG out to force him to do something. More people are likely to survive.

Let him draw the correct conclusion there. Barring that, just do it when he is distracted, yell it out, and then ask him what to do now.

Prometheus
2008-11-15, 11:48 PM
Earth is pretty hard to counter. Perhaps a Commune with Nature spell could tell you which areas are most vulnerable to earthquakes (or landslides) or where the source of it would be. Soften Earth, Stone or Stone to Mud, Create Water or Move Earth might be able to isolate buildings from the effects of a shock-wave, but I don't know. If anyone happens to have knowledge (engineering) than have them make a check to earthquake-proof homes (or identify which ones are vulnerable).

Sstoopidtallkid has it right for wind and water Control spells. I might also add the Wall of Wind (or Wall of Stone) might help against the wind. As for water, be sure to do Minor Creation (slab of cork shaped vaguely like a boat) Also, see if you can get a hold of a bunch of Quall's feather tokens (swan boat), so that way you can give people temporary rafts (32 people/450 gp). You may need emergency rescue as well, so be sure to prepare Floating Disk and Levitate. If you don't think the water will go away as it came, permanency a Wall of Flame and the water should evaporate in time or a Move Earth casting (it might let you divert the river (into the pentagon) or create levees that will limit how much the water can rise).

Some of these approaches involve scrolls of higher levels, buying magic items, or expending XP, but they are definitely to be considered.


My (somewhat crazy) suggestion, is to find some rambling lunatic within town. At your level, you should be able to access some spells that affect dreams. Use that to give him prophetic visions on what disaster is to come, and watch as he does your job of warning the townfolk.
Those that didn't listen to him at first, will probably start believing him after that prophesied earthquake occurs...(it may help if you include red herrings in his prophetic dreams to throw villain offtrack).
If his DM is like me, than there is a good chance you will inadvertently create a cult around this crazy guy and then have a side-quest just to put it down. That may not be the best idea. You might be able to accomplish the same goals with an anonymous magic mouth, arcane mark, or more mundane means of leaving messages.


What about the positive energy plane? If negative energy made them sick, won't positive energy nullify those effects?
Yeah...or the DM could make it spit out an unending horde of random monsters, because they frequent the positive plane. I would hope the DM forgets about the positive plane sooner than chance it.

Heliomance
2008-11-16, 05:10 AM
It won't spit out monsters, as it's not a gate. The vortces are conduits for energy only. What might happen is enough positive energy gets spewed out to make people start exploding. Hopefully not, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Heliomance
2008-11-29, 10:31 PM
Okay, we've done the five vortices. This is what happened.

Earth didn't actually cause any quakes. Instead, what happened was that the mortar in all the houses sorted itself by size, destroying its structural integrity and largely turning to dust. This made many houses fall down. Luckily, we'd organised a massive party outside the city, so no-one was hurt.

Air caused black clouds over the city, strong winds, and lightning. Lots and lots of lightning. Striking all over the city, with extreme regularity. A few fires caused, but not huge amounts of property damage certainly less than some of the previous vortices caused. Negative energy also got worse at this point, and there was an outbreak of typhoid fever.

We've just done water, and armageddon has started. The city is now sealed in by walls of magical force that go all the way up, and it's pouring with torrential rain. We're on a time limit. If the positive energy vortex doesn't go up in the next couple of hours, the city starts to flood, and there is nowhere for the water to go. This started about two minutes ago, we just got back to the city, and it's 5 IG minutes before the BBEG starts his riual in the final session. He's now showed his hand, and his troops are attacking people. We're going to take him down.

Oh, and his city-nuke? He was going to do this to the vortices. Exactly what we've just done, he was going to do all at once. Luckily for us, however, once the positive energy vortex goes up, the effects of the others will start to abate. Without that though, the city would be screwed, as it's virtually impossible to break through the magical barrier. We only got in because a warlock we know (enemy of my enemy situation) turned up with 700 men and did a ritual which gave him enough power for his eldritch blast to punch a hole in it.