Defend this City! [3.5]

[Calanon]

Raise a Mythral in the city with all the apropriate spells to leave the demons outside and stop them from entering.

Unfortunately, if we had access to Epic Spellcasting, this wouldn't be a problem Lets just go talk to the local Red Wizards group and convince them to construct a locate city bomb trick and coincidentally begin the testing on the day of the invasion ... Unfortunately even this will not kill off all the hoards of the Tana'ri (since most Demons have more then 1 HD... target it near the Manes and then we can talk )

Hmm... Lets see... buy a Candle of Invocation and then go in for infinite wishes... Cheesy and out of my character but I can't think of anything cheap and easy to defeat all the Tana'ri (Without Epic Spellcasting)

[Invader]

Druid 5/Planar Shepherd 10 Plane of Syrania

This might sound crazy but...

Wildshape into a Planetar (casts as a 17th level cleric)
This will all you to either A. Recruit all the angels in Syrania to come fight for or B. convince them all to come help you bring everyone back to life.

Effectively the whole town will be killed or everyone will be killed until the demons have completed whatever their goal was.

If you angels help you fight you either win in which case yay! or you lose in which case you get busy with all those angels with cleric levels casting raise dead, resurrection, true resurrection, etc. until everyone is brought back to life.

Coincidentally Planetars and Solars both can cast dimensional lock and the area is a 20 ft radius which should give you more than enough time to blanket the whole city with relatively few angels to help you. Ta da! no more demon portals.

[vampire2948]

Coincidentally Planetars and Solars both can cast dimensional lock and the area is a 20 ft radius which should give you more than enough time to blanket the whole city with relatively few angels to help you. Ta da! no more demon portals.

Surely they'd just appear outside the city and fly/walk/slither in.

[Invader]

That would be against the rules of the Test of Spite, surely?


5k of each type of monster you mentioned is far too much, whoever thought that was a good idea is clearly insane or thinks large numbers is a good way to challenge someone (look at the Immortals Handbook for how wrong that is) - This isn't something you can win in direct combat without epic spellcasting.

The solution is to go Artificer, create scrolls of Genesis, and use your 6 months to create a demiplane with appropriate stored resources and space to protect as much of the population as you can. When the army comes, you tell everyone in the city that they have to escape through a series of gates surrounded by a Antipathy spells of as high a DC as you can manage keyed against Demons.

Use multiple antipathies per gate for a greater chance that the Demons will fail their saves against at least one of them.

If possible, convince some of the population to leave prior to the attack. Perhaps by advertising your new genesis'd demiplane as a paradise of some sort.

Should be within your wealth limit if you use the usual Artificer-tricks for magic item cost reduction. Test of Spite rules limit this to 65% of the usual cost, at minimum.

Genesis is a 9th level spell and he's only level 15 plus its 5000xp to cast.

[Invader]

Surely they'd just appear outside the city and fly/walk/slither in.

He said the portals would appear in the city. I follow the letter of the law, not the spirit lol.

[Spider_Jerusalem]

Highest level NPC's: Adept 16, Aristocrat 15, Barbarian 16, Bard 18, Cleric 18, Commoner 22, Druid 17, Expert 20, Fighter 20, Monk 15, Paladin 14, Ranger 14, Rogue 19, Sorcerer 15, Warrior 20, Wizard 15.

An EPIC COMMONER??

I'd say this city is automatically safe, unless there's an advanced awakened fiendish dire cat in the demonic army.

[vampire2948]

Genesis is a 9th level spell and he's only level 15 plus its 5000xp to cast.

An Artificer could make an item of it at 15th. XP to craft stuff could be an issue - But hell, he's got 6 months, and can only craft 8 hrs per day. He can go fight some dragons or something for xp.

[Zonugal]

This seems like a problem for the Scholar!

Elan Artificer 15 with all the standard feats.

Build an 1/day item of Teleport Through Time and take yourself back by about ten years. Begin laying down any and all defenses you can manage in as subtle a way as possible.

In addition to this try to foster a prominent political career for your self as to plop yourself in a position of fair power.

[JeminiZero]

5k of balors bring an average of 100k of dretches. Marlith have 50% of doing the same, so lets say another 50k. Hezrou has 35% chance, so 35k of dretches So yeah, we do have a wall'O'Dretches numbering in 185k.

This means that in 1st round, you have 3+ dretches PER person.
And that is just from doing rough numbers from the commanding daemons. I forget if there is a rule against summoned daemons summoning, but in second round... its going to be 249.75k of dretches... from dretches summoning dretches. That's 5 dretches per person... SO yeah... odds are pretty terrible, and I think these number DO warrant my solution of co-operating with Daemon princes = ]

P.S. If anyone is interested =>
~250K of dretches is 3.25 million hit points, & 500HD[in terms of banishing]
While 15k of leading daemons TOGETHER is => 3.22 million Hitpoints & 230HD

An interesting piece of maths. Allow me to present the other side of the picture:

One self-resetting trap of Sacred item operating non-stop for 6 months can produce:

10 per minute x 60 min per hour x 24 hrs per day x 30 days a month x 6 mmonths = 2,592,000 sacred items.

At 7d4 damage each, that is a total of 45,360,000 HP damage. For ONE trap. Get several if you can.

[Invader]

An interesting piece of maths. Allow me to present the other side of the picture:

One self-resetting trap of Sacred item operating non-stop for 6 months can produce:

10 per minute x 60 min per hour x 24 hrs per day x 30 days a month x 6 mmonths = 2,592,000 sacred items.

At 7d4 damage each, that is a total of 45,360,000 HP damage. For ONE trap. Get several if you can.

Whats the monetary and xp cost for creating that many traps? Or even a reasonable amount of traps.

[Yukitsu]

IIRC, those weren't allowed in the test of spite anyway.

[Calanon]

This seems like a problem for the Scholar!

Elan Artificer 15 with all the standard feats.

Build an 1/day item of Teleport Through Time and take yourself back by about ten years. Begin laying down any and all defenses you can manage in as subtle a way as possible.

In addition to this try to foster a prominent political career for your self as to plop yourself in a position of fair power.

I like how this is by RAW legal (Spell component pouch FTW)

and thank you for giving me a campaign idea

[JeminiZero]

IIRC, those weren't allowed in the test of spite anyway.

Well the ToS ruleset was designed for arena duels, rather than defending a location (where traps would be useful), so the DM might make an exception.

If not, start using reach-chain spell with Sacred Item: Reach to give it range at +2 (so it occupies a 6th slot), and then chain to affect 1 object per CL (either using normal metamagic for a 9th slot, of with a metamagic rod).

[killianh]

so a single level 15 against 5000 of each demon? ouch!

I'd play a Chaotic Good (because my soul would be worth more then to convert) wizard and strike a bargain to have devils arise to the city and fight them off, then the city wouldn't be destroyed because the city is lawful neutral. It may become a bit oppressed, but the main point is they are all still alive and following what I believe in

After which heroes of all types and good outsiders would come in droves to liberate the taken city. The six months would probably be spent in litigation over the contract for my soul, other things I might be able to get for them, and the war that is to come

[cagemarrow]

Rather than Cleric perhaps you could use Binder instead, if Bloodlines are allowed, with the proper build and binding one of your vestiges to Zceryll you can have at will once every four or five rounds Summon Monster 9. I had this going in one game by 13th level.

There are multiple summons that have both wizard or cleric spells as a 12th level caster, Fierre and Ursinal Eladrin I think. They also can summon Djinni, SM 7, which can create permanent plant based objects of up to 20 cubic feet in size at will. There are also summons that get either reincarnate or raise dead as spell like abilities, Olyphant and Owl Archon maybe.

With these your wealth and casting restrictions are gone and even if there are casualties you can bring back those that are willing the next day. During the Age of Wyrms campaign after the end game battle my Binder had to surrender to an Inevitable for breaking the laws of death by bringing back an entire city worth of victims using these options.

[Acanous]

I'd probably go Killer Gnome with that one feat that lets you swap any two spells of a level for a slot one level higher, and prep Silent image as a 9th level spell, then miracle-spam. Miracle spam a lot. You can get at bare minimum two a day, No XP cost thanks to it being a shadow miracle. With 6 months of prep time, you should have the holiest of holy untouchable cities in the multiverse.

Edit: Pretty sure the feat required is Spell Versatility, but could be wrong there.

[Invader]

I'd probably go Killer Gnome with that one feat that lets you swap any two spells of a level for a slot one level higher, and prep Silent image as a 9th level spell, then miracle-spam. Miracle spam a lot. You can get at bare minimum two a day, No XP cost thanks to it being a shadow miracle. With 6 months of prep time, you should have the holiest of holy untouchable cities in the multiverse.

Edit: Pretty sure the feat required is Spell Versatility, but could be wrong there.

For that to work don't you have to be able to cast the higher level spell already?

[Downysole]

The Cleric (being the demon killers they are) NPC will also be key in helping out. Even if you don't get him to believe you about the demons coming, maybe you can get him super paranoid...enough to start packing slots with sacred item and to help protect the city. Assuming, of course, that he can cast good spells.

Also, Demon Dirge is a good spell for this. I know there are others.

Speaking of which, you're going to have a lot of spell resistance checks to get through. Might want to try to buff up your CL or Spell Penetration to get past that.

[Zeb]

Problem: 50,000 demons attacking a Ln city from random(esqe) gates at 1 per citizen in 6 months time with the goal of killing all the citizens.

Your lvl 15 character with WBL has a stated goal of protecting the citizens, foreknowledge of the attack and no one believes.

Your options as I see it are Dodge, Deflect, and Defeat.

Dodge: Ways to avoid the problem;
Somehow remove the city or citizens
Prevent Demon entry, Hallowed/forbidance, weirdstones dimensional lock, redirection of the gates ect.
All of these are hard to do and are not sure of working.

Deflect Not my problem;
Find a way to make the demons attack somewhere else
Pit something else against the demon hordes, how about a crusade, demon hunt or giving the devils an advantage in the blood war to really keep them occupied?
It seems the demons are doing a scorched earth to kill just a few specific people who will result in the "chosen one" later, determine who these are via divination or what not and set them aside magically or focus your defense on them alone, which brings us to...

Defeat or how to slay those which oppose you;
I've got friends:as others have suggested arrange for powerful or numerous forces to be in the city at the time of the attack, angels, devils, heroes, mages fair, cleric convention, Olympic games for heroes, who's who's meeting of movers and shakers, concert so good it attracts divine attention. shoot even pick a fight/ start a war with other badass planar powers so they will be there when demons arrive, no one likes demons.

Victory thru public works Use logistics and preparation to win.
(use of traps or super crafter encouraged) repave the city and install monuments of scared item, public lighting: lamps of celestial brilliance every 15 feet, parks and squares with pro evil or forbiddance, shrines lamppost and roadsigns of banishment and dismissal don't affect the citizens but will clear vast swaths of the lesser demons. the big issue here is protecting against all those suicide bombers Balor death throes 100 untyped damage to everything in 100 feet is pretty hard to negate without total cover. So one use items of resilient sphere's, traps, or beads of force provided to key people or set off before the attack could provide safety for some.

A hero to save us this is probably more what your DM had in mind, you build the anti-demon hero. For a crusade to hell I have ran an Uther Lightbringer type character an exalted cleric/morninglord/radiant servant/Eye of horus-re/master of radiance, position yourself in the center of the city on the attack and glow brighter and holier than the noon sun on Celestia. Extended and widened celestial brilliances with all the doubling to light effects with a 30 day duration you can pop off quite a few a day and should be able to blanket the city in your holy light. Recruit a powerful wizard/abjurer friend or have the party work to protect you/prevent the big ones from exploding too close to you and you can do just fine (wizards built on the phrase "you shall not pass" work wonders, repulsion, teleport traps, antipathy, a whole host of wall and force spells.)




Really mitigating the 5000 Balor bombs is what will probably make the situation untenable.

If you have any questions/ want more specifics on any of the strategies let me know I didn't want to occupy too much of the thread, my personal choice would be auto resetting traps/ one use items of spells but if that seems too cheese the you did get a free free build to make a hero...

[Snowbluff]

Play a Wizard, Fimbulwinter and Persisted/Widened Bloodsnow. No one is taking the city. Except for undead, but no one cares about the undead.

Use Simulacum to make yourself 250 million gp worth of Solar Simulacra. You'll probably delevel, but you could get a scroll for it instead. IIRC That should get you around EXP costs.

[Rubik]

Honestly, you don't WANT the Blood War to end. It's the only thing keeping the demons and devils from overrunning the multiverse.

I say let them destroy the town. Or at least have The Chosen One.

If he's fated to stop the Blood War then he needs to die.

[Jack of Trades]

Buy a weirdstone for 65K. This will stop Gating in for a 6 mile radius.
Place it in the center of the town as a 'gift' modern art statute. With some free permanent walls of force and circles of protection from evil and chaos as a free extra (i.e. protection).

This will now protect the city itself from demons Gating in. Although they can Gate in beyond the 6 miles.

You now have two options which are not mutual exclusive.
1. Go for the angel help. Since eveything will be taking place outside the city, thanks to the weirdstone, no damage will occur to the city.

2. Buy some strategical placed empty warehouses around the city. Paint them a nice distinctive color(s). Place some big magic circles of protection or circles of dismissal (if that exists or can be created) in them.
Tell everyone ahead of time about the warehouses. Doesn't matter if they believe you, just that they know about them ahead of time.
Maybe add a few town criers to get things moving.

"Eek! Demons! He was right. Where is the closest big white building with a red cross?"

[Gandariel]

Do you want to do this the AWESOME WAY?

use self resetting traps of Sacred Items. As many as you can.
Each self resetting trap, working for 6 months, produces more than 2 milions of castings.
Enchant milions of grains of sand.
Then, put the sand all over the city.

When the monsters are 10 minutes from coming, whip out your scroll of Control Weather.
Summon a whirlwind.
When the demons arrive, they'll be greeted by an enormous whirlwind of holy sand and Awesomeness.

[Spuddles]

Just emerald legion it. Immunity to everything is pretty good.

[Spuddles]

An EPIC COMMONER??

I'd say this city is automatically safe, unless there's an advanced awakened fiendish dire cat in the demonic army.

Give the commoner epic casting. Chaos shuffle his feats to jacob's ladder up to 9th level spells; use psy reformation to redistribute skill points. Then BAM, commoner wins the universe.

[Rejakor]

Rejakor's Five Step Plan to Defend this City from the Evils of DM Fiat;

Step 1; The Great Save the City Heist

Steal a whole bunch of money from a bank in the city, or elsewhere. Repeat as necessary, using catspaws and that fool scrying spell (from a scroll probably) to avoid people seeing what's actually occuring as necessary. Don't reveal your face/identity for 21 days either side, a mask for the robbery and a hood for the rest of it should be fine. That's if someone has that spell that lets them look into the past. Now, you have money.

Step 2; Getting help.

You have the diplomacy and bluff skill, and you have money. Don't explain yourself to anyone! ANYONE! Simply diplomance or take what you need. You want clerics. Preferably runecasters, but clerics on their own will do. You need 1-3 traps of Sacred Item, too. You'll also want a network of lower level rogues/thieves guild contacts.

Step 3; Setting up.

Using your traps and your minions every single item in the town should be sacred. Buy several warehouses around town, and make them absolutely airtight. Then buy a weirdstone, but don't deploy it yet.

Have the two Light spells from Book of Nauseatingly Good scribed into Runes and then placed in strategic, PROTECTED locations. They work through iron cages, they work through walls of force, they work through permanent magic circles against evil.. make it so. Also set them up so you can trigger them up to three times, in case the demons retreat for another go later.

Additionally, prepare some many tons of sand with Sacred Item.

In this stage, your helpers should be as far as possible watching each other to make sure no-one blabs to the demons about these preparations. Basic secret organization cell structure, etc, and have as many of them charmed/dominated as humanly possible. Try to find an enchanter that you determine is not working for the demons and have that twinked enchanter/psion do all kinds of mindreadey/mindcontrolley bull**** on your behalf.

Compile a list of all the military might on the planet. Start screwing with it, small scale sabotage but the kind that would worry all these organizations, churches, academies, and nations.


Also set up a low-lying (roof level) force dome over the city, with some insane caster level. Get a circle of red wizards or whatever to cast it at CL 80 or whatever, but have it dormant somehow (rune?). Alternatively, have this set up to be cast in step 4.

Step 4; Tomfoolery and associated rocket science

Establish teleport circles in the warehouses, which are clearly marked. Ward your weirdstone all to **** but don't turn it on yet. Have the teleport circles point somewhere really stupidly safe, like a massive well defended church city or the super wizard guild. If nothing like that exists, buy permanent gates instead, and have them point at celestia.

Have information show up at the good guy groups you were previously antagonizing showing them that a new and very evil cult is behind the stealing of the sacred blah, magical phooey, and powerful zing zang. And is going to use it all to create a massive planar breach over the town of [the one you are going to protect]. Gauge how long it will take them to respond and have the info hit them so they show up a few hours from the time when the demon invasion is going to occur. A while after they start showing up, have a kindly old (fake) wizard who lives in the town bumble over and be like 'there are evil cultists in the town! they are planning to destroy it! [in an unspecified way, this should not trigger the DM fiat thing] I have prepared escape teleport circles in case things get bad but I will need your help in getting people to go to them and protecting them just in case!' etc etc.

Get your sand into position, and your minions in key positions to activate anti-aerial enchantments (and the force dome) and summon/planar bind chaff monsters to slow down/distract the demons (*they do not know what they are there to do, all instructions are written and only opened at specific times).

Step 5; The big, fat, kill.

You should know roughly when the attack is going to hit. Have scrying spells everywhere all over the city waiting for the first gate to open. The instant it does, BAM, weirdstone goes on. Warehouses with the door shut should be blocking LoE if they're airtight, and so gates/circles inside will still work.

You also pop the force dome, and the forces of Good should be reacting as Good does, and saving civilians + killing any errant/immune demons.

A druid goes 'herpy derpy CONTROL WEATHERS' and sudden hurricane lowers visibility, makes flying harder, and covers the sky in Sacred Sand which hopefully reaps a dreadful ****ing toll, all your runes go BAMF and suddenly the air is killing demons and your city is basically demon-immune for the time it will take you to get everyone somewhere relatively safer. The force dome stops long range nukes from going off, you can layer it/turn it into a globe underground too to make it even more sure.

The one hitch in this plan is that if wherever your mans are going isn't safe demons will just go there instead and kill you regardless.

If even the other planes wouldn't be safe (I guess celestia has.. no defences?), high CL permanent walls of force, tiny flakes of that antigravity rock + sacred item to create permanent '**** you' to flying demons, bottles of air so no outside contact necessary, traps of create food and water, and sealed forcewalled ingress egress warehouse teleporters, and a weirdstone would make it relatively demonproof, at least as much as anything is until you get an antichaos antievil mythal going (which you will after the initial attack) and then you start training up your very own tippyverse Sieged City Of Doom.


Optionally; Find out whatever fiat solution the DM wants you to use, like the magical doodad of antidemons or whatever the ****, and use that. Or go beg the gods for 50,000 solars to help out.

[Red_Dog]

Honestly, you don't WANT the Blood War to end. It's the only thing keeping the demons and devils from overrunning the multiverse.

I say let them destroy the town. Or at least have The Chosen One.

If he's fated to stop the Blood War then he needs to die.

Well, to be exact, Blood War can't be lost by daemons, unless someone magically seals all the abyssal plane connections, Which to my knowledge is impossible, there is infinite number of infinite layers, ergo a whole lots of daemons. Perhaps this child will be able to seal of the planes from each other trapping daemons forever in Abyss? Who knows ^^

Devils[and not angels, they are too busy enforcing abstinence and sobriety or w/e hehe ^^ No seriously Angels, while being LG, are terribly uninvolved in this very very important cosmic struggle[BloodWar] and run errant for deities who are just as uninvolved hehe, "what do you mean? I am not reading into the lines at all *rollseyes*" = ) ] are what stopping daemons from running amok and burning the multiverse down as one big bonfire.
========================================>
However, the point of "don't mess with cosmic balance, you don't know what it will do" is 100% valid as "don't touch that, you don't know where its been" = ) . That is why D&D has Inevitables tasked[or self-tasked] with doing exactly that => keep things where they are.

So expecting them to be quick on the scene or even be behind this[to kill a child that will turn multiverse upside-in]. So yeah, interesting fluff solution.^^

P.S. I am in general, a supported of fluff/plot solutions to issues as big as this. Unless your DM has an amazing new mass combat system he/she has been dieing to try out[if that's the case, PLEASE share that ^^ ], its likely that you have 6 month to advance plot as much as you can and resolve this before the tidalwave of poop makes landfall.

But than again, we all are making a lot of assumptions about what DM wants in the game that we are not playing, so what do we know? ^^

[kabreras]

You really think that noone of the 5000 24 int balors will figure your tactic of sacred items and pop a greater dispel magic to get ride of it ?

[arixe]

you could use searing light spells. or what its called in 3.5 you could also summon a few gales. they are pretty powerful in their light form. back to searing light you could secretly replace street lamps with orbs that attack outsiders with the spell. i think it deals d8s to outsiders.

[Invader]

you could use searing light spells. or what its called in 3.5 you could also summon a few gales. they are pretty powerful in their light form. back to searing light you could secretly replace street lamps with orbs that attack outsiders with the spell. i think it deals d8s to outsiders.

It should be reiterated

5000 balors = 1,450,000 hps + 45,000 other demons = more than d8's needed lol.