OOTS #1186 - The Discussion Thread

[NobleCuriosity]

This sound a bit like the cult of Aton.
Their symbol is a giant nuclear reactor, after all.

I just want to say that this joke is thus far criminally underrated.

Although I don’t think they were actually called a cult in-comic (they definitely look like one though, they go way past normal MLM entry requirements); Haley was told they were a bunch of “thieves and robbers.”

[Peelee]

I just want to say that this joke is thus far criminally underrated.

Although I don’t think they were actually called a cult in-comic (they definitely look like one though, they go way past normal MLM entry requirements); Haley was told they were a bunch of “thieves and robbers.”

I dunno, from what I've read about MLM recruiting practices, the Test of the Oscillating Doom doesn't seem too bad.

[Jasdoif]

How does the range of Implosion compares with the blast radius of that bomb?

Well, implosion's range of Close and the implied minimum caster level means it's at least 105 feet....So barring some way to get the spell off without casting it personally, it'd probably only come up if, say, Redcloak and this hypothetical plutonium elemental suddenly appeared in the air and he was trying to set it off on the way down...and I wasn't really trying to recreate the scene from Dr. Strangelove, but I seem to have done it o_O

The real question is, what kind of damage does a nuclear explosion deal? I feel like it would deal a large amount of radiant damage on detonation, and everyone in the blast radius would have to save vs. blindness. Then probably fire damage post-explosion, and then...I don’t know...maybe poison damage, to represent the falllout? Or some kind of disease? I know very little about 3.5 edition.

It'd almost certainly be untyped damage...but frankly, I don't feel it's worth modelling as damage; the only time it'd really make a difference to model a ridiculously-large explosion as a scaled-up conventional explosion (a flat Ludicrously-High-d6 damage, with a Reflex save for half damage) is if you're trying to do something "clever" with evasion or regeneration...in which case you've pretty much already decided what's going to happen and the dice aren't worth bothering to roll. Similarly, even the demon core incidents took several days for radiation poisoning to result in death; anyone worth keeping track of who might have survived the initial explosion would have access to clerical magic to remove the aftereffects...unless you rule clerical magic can't remove the aftereffects, in which case you've pretty much already decided what's going to happen and the dice aren't worth bothering to roll.

Region-wide aftereffects are not the kind of the thing the game system for small groups of humans really has fleshed out. If that doesn't dissuade you...3.5's cousin, d20 Modern, has its d20 Apocalypse supplement that (unsurprisingly) talks a bit about dealing with that degree of devastation. It's mostly descriptive (except some of the bits on handling exposure to radioactivity, which are in d20 Modern's SRD), so it'd be reasonably tolerably adaptable.

[Cirin]

I love that Belkar knows what a train sounds like, despite there being no evidence of trains in this world ;) Honestly, this entire comic was excellent - "I said might" ;)

Trains are steam-level technology.

Could be Gnomish. We saw wackier stuff in Tinkertown.

If it's something that could be made with technology roughly predating 1850, I presume Gnomes can make it.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Trains are steam-level technology.

Could be Gnomish. We saw wackier stuff in Tinkertown.

If it's something that could be made with technology roughly predating 1850, I presume Gnomes can make it.

I m personally under the group of thpught that thinks that gnomes cn mae basiclly anything.

[Peelee]

I m personally under the group of thpught that thinks that gnomes cn mae basiclly anything.

But can dwarves make sense of why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

[Wizard_Lizard]

But can dwarves make sense of why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

because cinnamon

[Aeson]

because cinnamon

I suspect it has more to do with the sugar, myself.

The tricky thing about building an atomic bomb, apart from getting the materials, is designing it so that the subcritical masses are brought together quickly enough. If so, you get a fully critical mass, rather than multiple masses getting close together that are just on the edge of criticality and melt / boil / splatter and make a big mess as well as giving off quite a bit of radiation. As I understand it.

For a bomb, you really want the mass to go very, very supercritical - a mass which is merely critical simply isn't releasing energy rapidly enough to explode with city-destroying force.

[Cazero]

It'd almost certainly be untyped damage...but frankly, I don't feel it's worth modelling as damage;

Neither is lava, or falling from orbit.
So, something like 30d8? Maybe less?

[diremage]

Neither is lava, or falling from orbit.
So, something like 30d8? Maybe less?

I'd probably model a nuclear blast as an AoE Disintegrate effect. So, 2d6 per caster level, maybe reflex save to get behind something solid and taking only 5d6. That lets you scale it to the party, work it into an encounter and still have it be "levels a city" kind of devastation. It can kill party members (the party cleric, in particular, is going to be in danger of being one-shotted, and probably the wizard also) without being a TPK.

And of course, the party fighter can take a direct hit from a nuke and keep on trucking. He'll be feeling it in the morning, though.

[brian 333]

I'd probably model a nuclear blast as an AoE Disintegrate effect. So, 2d6 per caster level, maybe reflex save to get behind something solid and taking only 5d6. That lets you scale it to the party, work it into an encounter and still have it be "levels a city" kind of devastation. It can kill party members (the party cleric, in particular, is going to be in danger of being one-shotted, and probably the wizard also) without being a TPK.

And of course, the party fighter can take a direct hit from a nuke and keep on trucking. He'll be feeling it in the morning, though.

This is how GammaWorld campaigns begin, and you really don't want to go there...

[Riftwolf]

I'd probably model a nuclear blast as an AoE Disintegrate effect. So, 2d6 per caster level, maybe reflex save to get behind something solid and taking only 5d6. That lets you scale it to the party, work it into an encounter and still have it be "levels a city" kind of devastation. It can kill party members (the party cleric, in particular, is going to be in danger of being one-shotted, and probably the wizard also) without being a TPK.

And of course, the party fighter can take a direct hit from a nuke and keep on trucking. He'll be feeling it in the morning, though.

D&D doesn't have nukes, but 3.5 does have Locate City Bombs, which are far worse.

[Jasdoif]

Neither is lava, or falling from orbit.
So, something like 30d8? Maybe less?

Well, d20 Modern has rules for varying amounts of conventional explosives; so if you insist....


Since I was just talking about the demon core....Fat Man had a 21 kiloton yield, so it was equivalent to 21,000,000 kilograms of TNT; which converts to about 46,297,000 pounds of TNT. Quick Google search suggests Semtex is 1.25 times as potent as TNT; which converts to about 37,038,000 pounds of Semtex.

Now, according to the rules above, one pound of Semtex does 4d6 damage and has a 10 foot burst radius, and each additional pound increases the damage by 2d6 and the burst radius by two feet. So with that much, we end up with....


74076002d6, affecting everything in 74,076,008 feet. So, everything in 14,030 miles is obliterated.

Except the Tarrasque, which gets up after its regeneration recovers from the damage 125-771 days later.

[Peelee]

Since I was just talking about the demon core....Fat Man had a 21 kiloton yield, so it was equivalent to 21,000 kilograms of TNT; which converts to about 46,297 pounds of TNT. Quick Google search suggests Semtex is 1.25 times as potent as TNT; which converts to about 37,038 pounds of Semtex.

Now, according to the rules above, one pound of Semtex does 4d6 damage and has a 10 foot burst radius, and each additional pound increases the damage by 2d6 and the burst radius by two feet. So with that much, we end up with....


74078d6, affecting everything in 74,084 feet. So, everything in 14 miles is obliterated.

...can I roll a Reflex check for half damage?

[Jasdoif]

...can I roll a Reflex check for half damage?

Sure! Semtex's DC 18 for half is the highest on the table, so why not? (You're being awfully evasive....)

[bunsen_h]

D&D doesn't have nukes, but 3.5 does have Locate City Bombs, which are far worse.

I hadn't heard of that one (not a big surprise given my having been out of the loop for a while). Impressive!

The biggest bang that I ever set up in-game never got activated. It involved casting "Reduction" on a bunch of large-ish objects -- blocks of stone or ice; I don't recall which, and I'd created a bunch of scrolls with the spell. Gathering them into a pile. Then, shortly before they started re-expanding, casting one of the "totally impervious" barrier spells around them. At the time, the Wall of Force could be cast as a sphere; now, you'd use a Force Cage, I suppose, though you could also work it with four Wall of Force spells arranged to enclose a tetrahedral volume.

From the point of view of the shrunk objects, when the Reduction wears off, the surroundings rapidly become smaller.

What kind of heat and pressure do you get by compressing water or stone into a very small fraction of their normal volume? Enough to get fusion? What happens when the enclosing spell wears off? Even if you don't achieve fusion, you're going to get quite a bang when that pressure is released.

[BarakDeathBlade]

Also, you can't have a railroad plot without railroads.

Seven pages and nobody mentioned http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0494.html ?

Roy clearly knows what a train is.

[Jasdoif]

Seven pages and nobody mentioned http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0494.html ?

Roy clearly knows what a train is.

I haven't come across a telekinetic power with an auditory display, so I don't think that's a reason Roy would associate a "choo choo" noise with a train. Then again, Roy isn't the one associating a choo choo noise with a train....

[goodpeople25]

I haven't come across a telekinetic power with an auditory display, so I don't think that's a reason Roy would associate a "choo choo" noise with a train. Then again, Roy isn't the one associating a choo choo noise with a train....

While we don't see the rest of the train to know how it's powered or what information the story conveys about the train to Roy, the cutaway panel implies that the situation presented is abnormal so the question remains of how the train normally works.

[Peelee]

Seven pages and nobody mentioned http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0494.html ?

Close, but no cigar. First post on the sixth page:

A train also appears here.

[Ruck]

Hey, it’s strip 1186, and isn’t it also year 1186 in universe?

In universe it is calendar year 1184.

[danielxcutter]

Close, but no cigar. First post on the sixth page:

>:3c Sudden Strike!

[BarakDeathBlade]

Also, you can't have a railroad plot without railroads.

Close, but no cigar. First post on the sixth page:

Fair enough. Missed it.

[Sir_Galliant]

In that case, how would you model the damage of Tsar Bombs used at full power? That would be one helluva kick...

[Fyraltari]

In that case, how would you model the damage of Tsar Bombs used at full power? That would be one helluva kick...

‘Tsar Bomb falls, everybody dies’.

[D.One]

‘Tsar Bomb falls, everybody dies’.

If you are inside an old refrigerator, you may try a Fortitude Save DC 30 to take only 30d6 damage

[Jasdoif]

In that case, how would you model the damage of Tsar Bombs used at full power? That would be one helluva kick...

‘Tsar Bomb falls, everybody dies’.

This. I mean, we were already well past that point....The rules were pretty clearly not designed to scale anywhere near this far; I can tell because the formula assumes a correlation between weight and radius, rather than weight and volume. That does, of course, mean extrapolating is easy to estimate....


Tsar Bomba would theoretically have a 100-megaton yield; so basically multiply everything above by 5,000. Hundreds of millions of dice, obliterates everything in 70,000 miles, the Tarrasque would be unconscious for three months to a year-and-a-half....

If that sounds like too much work, don't worry: That's enough damage, on average, to destroy a 27-mile thick object made of stone. I think Earth's continental crust is like 25 miles? And that blast radius is over four times Earth's diameter, so....It really depends on if or how much you want to deal with line of effect and/or conceptually slicing the crust into distinct pieces; but an airburst spaceburst over an Earth-ish world would vaporize everyone on up to half the planet's surface, and most of that half becomes lava-filled badlands horriblelands horribadlands....And immersion in lava doesn't allow a save, so using evasion on the still-DC-18 Reflex save isn't thorough enough on its own. And even though the Tarrasque's immunity to fire damage would keep it from being indefinitely unconscious from immersion in lava, it still needs to breathe so that'd get annoying in a hurry (it can't be killed by failing saves against instant death effects, but drowning doesn't allow a save....).

EDIT: This was ludicrous before; if you want to multiply things by a thousand to get more "accurate" numbers, be my guest >>;


So, yeah, this would be setting-background scale stuff if you bothered to model it this way...which is why you shouldn't bother to model it this way.

[Rogar Demonblud]

I don't remember all the trivia with Etherealness off the top of my head, but am I right in thinking it doesn't help with AoE attacks?

[Lord Torath]

Since I was just talking about the demon core....Fat Man had a 21 kiloton yield, so it was equivalent to 21,000 kilograms of TNT; which converts to about 46,297 pounds of TNT. Quick Google search suggests Semtex is 1.25 times as potent as TNT; which converts to about 37,038 pounds of Semtex.

I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude here. A kiloton is a thousand tons, and a (metric) ton is 1000 kg, so a 21 kiloton yield is the equivalent of 21 million kg of TNT, not 21,000 kg.

[Jasdoif]

I don't remember all the trivia with Etherealness off the top of my head, but am I right in thinking it doesn't help with AoE attacks?

You'd be on the the Ethereal Plane rather than the Material Plane, so you'd be outside the affected area; though you might have to deal with the absence of a planet from "under" you if you're ethereal from a temporary effect.

You may be thinking of incorporeality, in which case you'd be immune to the nonmagical attack...though not having anything else around you might cause you indirect problems.

---

I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude here. A kiloton is a thousand tons, and a (metric) ton is 1000 kg, so a 21 kiloton yield is the equivalent of 21 million kg of TNT, not 21,000 kg.

Hm. So it is; apparently my double-check for the definition of kiloton ended up on a definition of general TNT equivalency that talked about kilotons later on....Which still sounds like it's not worth modelling. Especially since that would mean detonating Tsar Bomba on Earth could pulverize Venus, depending on distance between the planets at the time....