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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Titan in the Playground
     
    PirateCaptain

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    Apr 2012

    Default Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    Through various influences I've recently been pondering about what set of rules or mechanism one could acquire tbst would enable a affluent character to "breed" an army, tbousa2nds strong, of tough, processional soldiers.

    Lets say they're lvl 3 fighters with stats of: str 16, dex 12, con 16, int 10, wis 11, cha 9.

    We want to breed these things by the thousands from our spawning pits, equip them a variety of arms and armor suited to their given tasks, and we want a chain of command so that thet can operate independently of player characters in tge field.

    How would we go about doing this?
    "Of all the words by tongue and pen, by far the saddest are "I could have been...""

    "The first rule of success is to have a vision. You see if you don’t have a vision of where you are going, if you don’t have a goal for where to go, you’ll drift around and never end up anywhere...can you imagine a majority of people don't know where they are going? I knew where I was going!” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    3.x I assume?
    Depends on who is doing it and how?
    For the BBEG, just handwave it. It happens.

    For players: breeding generally requires a selection of base creatures to start from and careful breeding programs over generations (not something you're likely to do unless you're an elf or undead or something). The level 3 fighter bit comes from training, not genetics, so unless you want to houserule that classes can be learned in some Lamarckian fashion, you'll need a very intensive and competant training regime - which pushes the costs even higher. This will be very expensive - I don't even want to start calculating the cost per creature.

    Lastly, if you want what we saw in the LOTR movies, you basically need a variant of the Clone spell that doesn't leave the extras crazy and trying to kill eachother (probably a 9th level spell at this point). Find one 3rd level Fighter with the stats you want and make an army of him.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    BardGuy

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    Mar 2013

    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    Quote Originally Posted by BWR View Post
    For players: breeding generally requires a selection of base creatures to start from and careful breeding programs over generations (not something you're likely to do unless you're an elf or undead or something).
    An approach might instead be to somehow shorten the time until a new generation is mature enough to procreate.
    Something like Age maybe? Caveat: you then get into territory where the subjects are bodily mature for sex, but not mentally, and I'd count then coercing them into procreating as an Evil act.

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    OrcBarbarianGirl

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    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    From what I'm seeing, at least in the 3.5 Clone spell, the resulting clone is only an inert body until its progenitor dies, at which point the 'exactly alike including class levels less one level or two points Con' bit kicks in. So, barring DM fiat, where are you getting the souls- however young and stunted- to drive these bodies around?

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    Quote Originally Posted by LokiRagnarok View Post
    An approach might instead be to somehow shorten the time until a new generation is mature enough to procreate.
    Something like Age maybe? Caveat: you then get into territory where the subjects are bodily mature for sex, but not mentally, and I'd count then coercing them into procreating as an Evil act.
    I'd say you're probably well on your way to Evil the moment you want to use Saruman as your rolemodel and force grow an army of warriors.

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    OrcBarbarianGirl

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    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    Agreed- generally trying to create the Enlisted Man is a bad business no matter who or what you're doing it for. That said- no empire was ever created bloodlessly, so it could definitely add some interesting roleplay opportunities for PCs as they discover how it all was done or try to justify what was done and in whose name. Maybe they'll have to deal with the aftermath, if the soldiers are meant as a one-off use and to be mopped up after the war is over- or figuring out what to do with a bunch of brainwashed soldiers when some of them don't stay brainwashed or start asking the big questions like any other child whose curiosity grows beyond what they were encoded with at birth.

    I'm curious as to the answer to the original poster's question, as I've envisioned a Sauruman-style origin for a race in my homebrew setting, and it would be really cool to know which spells specifically the mages of the Ancient Sorcerous Empire (tm) would need to devote themselves to for that kind of production-scale.

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Troll in the Playground
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    Feb 2013

    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    You mean your orcs don't climb out of sorcerers' cauldrons?

    Pffft.

    Anyway, it's a really poor use of epic spells if they're allowed, but reverse-engineering Origin of Species: Achaierai is easy. Conjure Seed (DC 21) + Life Seed (DC 27), permanent (x5) = 240 DC. Mitigate that with a 100-day casting time (seems pretty appropriate for slowly breeding your own warriors in secret) for -200, total DC 40 (trivial at 21st level). The spell will create full-grown, 1 HD, +0 natural AC, no natural attacks creatures with arbitrary ability scores; full-grown orcs, for instance, or whatever you like.

    If you use the stupid RAW cost and time, that's 360,000 gp, 14,400 XP, and 7 days to research. If you use the smarter way (basing cost & time on pre-mitigation DC), it's 2,160,000 gp, 86,400 XP, and 43 days. Really, mitigation should make epic spells more expensive to research, since it ultimately enables more powerful spells, but whatever...

    Also, really, the above spell would fit better as a 7th to 9th level spell, given the actual effects. It's nowhere near as powerful as e.g. gate.
    Last edited by Rhynn; 2014-04-13 at 04:02 AM.

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Titan in the Playground
     
    PirateCaptain

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    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    Quote Originally Posted by BWR View Post
    I'd say you're probably well on your way to Evil the moment you want to use Saruman as your rolemodel and force grow an army of warriors.

    Hey! I resent that .

    Rhynns idea is along the line of what I was thinking. But epic level? Good lord no, I'm not getting any younger. By that tine I might as well Wish myself 25,000 gp worth of soldier hirelings, or Gate in some dragons to fight my wars for me.

    The seed idea is good. Say, a transmution or necromancy spell. Each casting changes, hmmm...say 3d12 maize seeds into tiny embryos tbat, when planted and cared for, will develop into said warrior race that will reach maturity within a couple of months and are instinctvely loyal and obedient to the caster.

    Reagents coupld be the seeds soaked in a litre of The casters blood.

    Perhaps a sixth lvl spell? Buy sone land from a Duke or something and get your groove on.
    "Of all the words by tongue and pen, by far the saddest are "I could have been...""

    "The first rule of success is to have a vision. You see if you don’t have a vision of where you are going, if you don’t have a goal for where to go, you’ll drift around and never end up anywhere...can you imagine a majority of people don't know where they are going? I knew where I was going!” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

  9. - Top - End - #9
    Halfling in the Playground
     
    OrcBarbarianGuy

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    Apr 2014

    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    If you are in the forgotten realms, you might try to get your hands on a Deepspawn. Those are creatures from the Underdark, that can give birth to exact copies every creature you feed it in a few days. Normally one spawn every 4d6 days, but if you feed it well it will produce up to one copy every 3 days. This can allow you to spawn lots of trained Fighters(or nasty monsters) totally finished with training and ready to go.

  10. - Top - End - #10
    Orc in the Playground
     
    EvilClericGuy

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    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    Can you clone+animate object+training? Or would you end up needing animate dead?

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Kobold

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    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    Deepspawn seem to be the best way to go. Just get a group of them put them under your control and feed them corpses of the creature you want an army of. The birthed creatures obey the Deepspawn and the Deepspawn obey you.

  12. - Top - End - #12
    Colossus in the Playground
     
    NecromancerGuy

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    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    The Emerald Legion is less about the breeding in a eugenics sense and more about applying the templates and then breeding and applying the templates that have to be applied to the creature rather than its antecedents...

    You can, of course, take it down a notch or two.

    And you can easily get Half-Fiends or Half-Celestials via a pair of spells from Book of Erotic Fantasy that apply the templates on top of anything else that's going on, and Half-Fey, Half-Fiend, Half-Celestial, and Phrenic are all templates that enjoy having lots of HD to go with them. Half-Fiend especially is nice if you can manage the customized forms of it.

    Though a lot depends upon what game you're actually playing and what sources are available to you.
    Last edited by Coidzor; 2014-04-14 at 04:40 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Keld Denar View Post
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  13. - Top - End - #13
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Apr 2012

    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    personally, I'd go with awaken and permanency anthropomorphic animal and choose whatever powerful creatures were readily available

  14. - Top - End - #14
    Halfling in the Playground
     
    BlueWizardGirl

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    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    Have you considered slaad farming? I know that creatures of pure chaos don't seem especially good as soldiers, but I don't think there's anything that makes them immune from a Helm of Opposite Alignment. Start with chickens or whatever, summon or polymorph into a slaad to give them slaad fever, and have them bound and ready to have the helmet forcibly popped on their heads as soon as they turn. I figure that should make them extremely orderly, and since they have no other place in the world, you can offer them the structure of your new army. Then they can inject slaad eggs, and the cycle continues.

  15. - Top - End - #15
    Troll in the Playground
     
    JeminiZero's Avatar

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    Default Re: Breeding an army, Saruman-style

    There is/was the Creation Forges of Eberron, which were used to mass produce Warforged soldiers.

    From a Tippyesque perspective, you could have self-resetting traps that crank out permanent minions, stuff like Simulacrum and Ice Assassin would be loyal to you.

    Also of interest: There is a spell in SpC called Curse of Lycanthropy that kills a humanoid, and produces 1d6 wererats... whom are also humanoid, and hence also valid target for another casting. With a self-resetting trap, you could spam wererats non-stop. But they would not be loyal to you by default, so the next step might have to be a self-resetting trap of mind-rape.
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