Does this method actually work? Killer Gnome Adepts Needed

[Ninebalthazaar]

Uh, I can't post links yet, to link to the reddit Thread. This post is 3 years old and stumbled across it a week ago. I thought since no one else in the thread said otherwise, that the method. Mechanically speaking was possible, but want to be sure.

Here Goes :


Totally depends on your DM.

Nerull is a greater deity, so you are really gonna not want to face him on his home plane. He can pretty much do whatever he wants there.

He also is the god of murder, it's in his portfolio. He has portfolio sense, which means he knows when a murder is going to happen weeks in advance. So he basically knows if you're plotting to murder him.

If you really want to go full out deity killing, you're going to have to find a way to plot your murder in alternate universe, outside the known universe, or enlist the aid of Vecna and become Vecna blooded. Vecna blooded would probably be best, but I'm fairly sure a middling template won't protect you from portfolio sense. Maybe it will- being the faceless, nameless servant of the god of secrets might protect you from the god of murder, as you plot your plots.

So let's go with Vecna Blooded to thwart portfolio sense. I mean there is some cool stuff you can do with mindraped simulacra that pretend to be you in one universe as you plot in the Far Realms or the Travel Through Time spell, but let's leave that to people who pretended they liked Primer.

In this fight with a god, you are the only one who can actually bring anything mechanically useful to the table. The other party members are no good.

In all likelihood, this battle will take place on an outer plane. It's unlikely you'll be able to lure Nerull to the material realm. This means you main trick, shadow crafting, won't work, because [shadow] spells require you to be on or co-terminus with the plane of shadow. The plane of shadow is only co-terminus with the material and I believe the ethereal, and perhaps the other inner planes (fire, water, etc).

Luckily, you have a (very powerful) work around. Get yourself a collar of umbral metamorphosis (shadowcaster section of Tome of Magic). This gives you the Dark template for free- a very good template in its own right. The template also makes you a creature of the plane of Shadow, which means you can use planar bubble to create a small piece of shadow-plane around yourself, even on the outer planes. So now you can cast shadow magic anywhere you like AND your shadow conjuration/evocation just got 10% stronger.

Ok, so now you have planned to murder the god of murder, and you have class features to assist in this.

Now here's where it gets tricky. Assuming that Nerull is the god from Deities & Demigods, that is to say, a poorly optimized bag of HP, you just shoot him with spells until he goes to -10. If he is a legit deity in the Platonic idea of a perfect being or something gay and christian like that, then tough luck.

But let's say he's basically something with a finite amount of HP, non-finite armor class, non-finite save bonuses, and non-finite spell resistance. That means we need to find a spell that doesn't allow spell resistance and doesn't allow a save. Luckily, there are plenty. Hitting his AC will be hard, but luckily a 20 always hits.

We're going to use orb of fire, from Spell Compendium. 4th level spell, ranged touch attack, does up to 15d8 fire damage, no save, no spell resistance. Also a save or become dazed, which doesn't really matter because greater deities can treat all their dice rolls as natural 20s.

Oh yeah, and being a greater deity, he always goes first.

Luckily, you have foresight up, meaning you are not surprised or flat footed, so you can take an immediate action to cast celerity (players handbook 2) and get an instant standard action. With that standard action, we're going to cast a finite, but arbitrarily large, number of orbs of fire. Actually, first, we're going to use a greater metamagic rod of maximize to get off a maximized time stop for positioning and a little recon.

So now we need to cast a lot of orbs of fire. In Complete Mage, there is a spell called Greater Arcane Fusion, but unfortunately that is Sorcerer only. Fortunately, you're a killer gnome, and can cast Shadow Miracles.

Here's what you do. You cast Shadow Miracle: Sanctum Spell Greater Arcane Fusion. Now, Greater Arcane Fusion is an 8th level spell, which isn't on the cleric list, so a Miracle cannot mimic it. However, Sanctum Spell (complete arcane) lowers the spell level of a spell when cast outside of a sanctum by one level, which makes Sanctum Spell Greater Arcane Fusion a 7th level spell effect- Miracle is explicitly called out to allow these.

Arcane Fusion lets you cast any 4th level spell with any 7th level spell you know. Your 4th level spell will be sanctum searing orb of fire. Searing is a metamagic from sandstorm that makes your fire damage spells do half damage to foes that are immune and increases your spell by one effective level; sanctum lowers that back down for us.

So now we've got a ranged touch attack throwing 15d8 of fire damage at Nerull, which is so hot, it will burn him even if he is immune to fire. Now for the 7th level spell- Sanctum Spell Greater Arcane Fusion.

This lets us nest over 9,000 fire orbs inside of each other. We're going to need a lot, because only 1 in 20 are hitting, but that's ok because we have an arbitrarily large amount.

Congratulations, you just murdered the greater deity of murder before he even got to take an action. Just hope that your DM doesn't know how to optimize magic like the internet does!

Oh, one other thing about orb of fire- it's an instantaneous conjuration. It will even work inside an antimagic field. You may not be able to cast it in there, but you can cast it into or through anti-magic, and nothing will happen to it. Pretty spiffy.

If you find yourself within arbitrary null-magic areas, Initiate of Mystra allows you to make a CL check to cast inside, while Invoke Magic (Lords of Madness) is a 9th level spell you can cast as a swift action to allow you to cast a 4th level spell.




~~~~~END~~~~
Kind of A long read, sorry. Input needed, and thanks in advance!

[Khedrac]

So you used your interrupt standard action to cast a time stop.
That means you are planning on making all of your attacks during the time-stop? Congratulations, nothing happens - you cannot use a spell that directly affects another entity during a time-stop.
If you plan to do it outside the time-stop, if you are playing a game with this level of optimization then so is Nerull, and he probably has access to a lot more cheesy tricks than you do.
Starting with Celerity to interrupt your interrupt and something similar back at you.

A better spell to do this with is Hail of Stone - no attack roll required (there are ways to make those pesky natural 20s miss like miss chances).

If you look around these boards you will find lots of different ways to cheese anything (usually deities) to death.

[Troacctid]

In this scenario, you cannot use Greater Arcane Fusion to cast another Greater Arcane Fusion, because Greater Arcane Fusion can only be used to cast spells that you know.

[Zanos]

It doesn't work because Nerull has Alter Reality and the Life and Death SLAs, which means he has any 9th level or lower spell in existence he wishes active on him permanently, and can slay any mortal anywhere with no save. Anything you can do, he can do better, because Alter Reality is one of the most busted abilities in the game. His Automatic Actions also allow him to use "any death-producing spell or domain power" as a free action, up to twenty times per round.

Vecna Blooded doesn't protect you from portfolio sense. It is not a divination spell.

[Gildedragon]

Because of Nerul's Portfolio it is not adviceable to go straight on to kill him.
Taking a greater deity down is a more elaborate process: much of it based on speculation because, like becoming a god, getting rid of one is DM dependent.
For one: you must realize you will not kill Nerul. You will take him down which is different. In fact you will not kill anyone.

After that you must attack Nerul's power base:
Turn worshipers away from Nerul; either proselitize another death god, remove the fear of death, or thwart the deathcults (give them crises of faith if possible); this might be done by bringing the dead back to life, creating deathless (you might get some inevitables harassing youdeathly ese two things), establish a cult to solve murders and punish-rehabilitate murderers (pairs well with the proselytizing). The goal of this is to make his divine status start dropping; if you can control who gets the now free worship even better.

You will have to deal with minions of Nerul hunting for you in the abstract (they don't know who is being a thorn in their god's side). You can convert them or knock them out and give them a quintessence dip. They aren't dead but they're out for the count.
Also you will have to deal with the godhood-protecting inevitables.
Once Nerul has lost most of his portfolio sense and his strongest salient abilities then you can consider offing the guy.

[Janthkin]

Sounds like the basis for a pretty cool campaign, actually. Though it works better as a BBEG advancing the plot, and the PCs stumbling through it periodically. Bonus points since he is actively incentivized not to kill PCs, as he doesn't want his identity getting passed back up the food chain.

[Ninebalthazaar]

Thanks all of you guys ! I havent been on enough to reply to everyone , so collectively, thanks yo.