Moon colony?

[Soup of Kings]

Getting to the moon shouldn't be a problem. With Greater Teleport, and a powerful telescope or magical means of studying the moon's surface, it should actually be quite simple, assuming you figure out how to survive. As for attacking people from a satellite, my method technically works, but there ought to be a more realistic (In terms of DnD, at least) way of getting hits off.

If there's an epic spell that literally lets you throw someone into orbit, there's gotta be a way to strike people down from the moon.

........

I'll be right back, I have a date with my Epic Level Handbook...

Mwa ha ha and such...

[Dervag]

While you would have a hard time surviving in the vacuum, you wouldn't take cold damage from it. There's simply not enough matter around for convection or conduction to take place. Without convection or conduction, there's no loss of heat.

I'm afraid physics doesn't quite work that way.

Any object with a nonzero temperature radiates EM waves (or photons or whatever you want to call it). The frequency and amount of this radiation depends on the temperature. High temperature objects like the Sun and a flame emit on a high enough frequency that we can see it. Medium temperature objects like, say, us emit on what we call 'infrared' frequencies.

Now, if you're surrounded by objects at the same temperature as yourself, for every photon you emit you will be getting another one back, so your total energy remains constant. This is known as 'radiative equilibrium'.

In space, the temperature of radiative equilibrium is three degrees above absolute zero. That level of low-energy EM radiation is left over from the Big Bang, so it permeates all of space.

On Earth, radiation is not normally a major cause of the loss or gain of heat. But there are exceptions. For example, the reason people get horrible burns from a nuclear blast has nothing to do with convection or conduction of heat. Air can't conduct heat fast enough to cause that kind of injury that fast. Instead, the enormous amount of light created by the detonating bomb simply radiates out in all directions. If you're looking at it, some of it hits you in the face. If you're close enough to the blast there will literally be enough light to burn your face off like a giant laser cannon or something.

But except for freakishly hot, very rapid sources of heat like that, most objects on Earth move heat through convection and conduction. The reason is obvious- everything on Earth is touching other objects and/or the air around it, so it will always be able to move a lot of heat quickly through convection or conduction.

You're right that in space convection and conduction don't happen. But there's still the matter of radiation. You would be quite visible in space on infrared vision scopes, because your body is hot enough to glow in the infrared. Absent a background of other objects at similar temperatures all around you, you'd be even more visible.

Likewise, pointing your face at a nearby nuclear explosion would still be a good way to get horribly burned, because you'd still get zorched by the light emitted from the blast. Even if the radiation had no effect on you at all you'd still feel the thermal pulse of heat.

The practical upshot of all this is that if you jettison an object in space its temperature probably won't remain constant. Instead, it will go into radiative equilibrium with its surroundings.

If there isn't a star nearby (stars being even brighter than the aforementioned nuclear explosion), as when the object is in a shadow or in the depths of interstellar space, then the equilibrium temperature is about three degrees above absolute zero. It will not get colder than 3° K, but that will be its temperature. It will not simply keep whatever temperature it had when you threw it overboard.

On the other hand, if it's in direct sunlight at close range (as in, less than many billion miles) it will gain considerable heat from the star. The radiative equilibrium is reached when the object is radiating enough energy to shed all the energy it's gaining from the star's light.

For objects orbiting the Earth, this temperature is something like 100°C. Again, not necessarily the temperature you threw it overboard at.

Your lungs and eyes and blood boil away. That is seriously bad. You eyes will pop because they're squishy. Your brain will try and squeeze itself out your eyeholes. Your lungs and ribcage will probably either pop or you'll sneeze your own epiglottis into space. UNFUN things will happen to you.

It doesn't quite work like that. People have actually experienced loss of cabin pressure at space or near-space altitudes, and it won't blow up your eyeballs or cause you to exhale your internal organs.

Our bodies are more or less solid objects, and solid objects don't just self-destruct when exposed to vacuum.

And space is hot. Stuff melts.

Most stuff won't melt at earth-orbit levels of sunlight. I mean, spacecraft are made out of things like iron and they're just fine. Anything that won't melt in boiling water (or, to be safe, boiling oil) won't melt in direct sunlight in outer space.

[Emperor Tippy]

You can make stars and disintegrate everything in a hundred light years with the ELH. Turning the moon into a deathstar is minor epic magic.

[Soup of Kings]

Catgirl genocide.

So, for the stupids out there (Me) can you simplify that to "Yes/no, you do/don't take heat/cold/vacuum damage."?

You can make stars and disintegrate everything in a hundred light years with the ELH. Turning the moon into a deathstar is minor epic magic.

Yeah, but a spell that disintegrates everything in a hundred light years would have a pretty high spellcraft DC, wouldn't it?

[Emperor Tippy]

Yeah, but a spell that disintegrates everything in a hundred light years would have a pretty high spellcraft DC, wouldn't it?

DC 255 pre mitigation thanks to the funky epic rules where each factor is applied in order and successively and not one after the other.

[Soup of Kings]

Really?
How's that?
Not that I'm saying I don't believe you, I'm just not very good with epic spells.

[Emperor Tippy]

Really?
How's that?
Not that I'm saying I don't believe you, I'm just not very good with epic spells.

The stupid Epic Level Handbook says that you apply factors 1 after the other, so unlike all the rest of the D&D universe 2 doubling's equals a quadrupling instead of a tripling.

So you get things like ((20*2)*2)*2) for a final radius of 160 instead of 80 with 3 100% increases. It's one of the stupider things in the D&D rules.

And even with the regular stacking rules you can mitigate the DC down to 0 easily and give it to yourself as an at will, free action, Ex ability.

[Soup of Kings]

Ah. So how is it developed, like, destroy seed, change it to an area effect and multiply the hell out of it?

[Emperor Tippy]

Ah. So how is it developed, like, destroy seed, change it to an area effect and multiply the hell out of it?

Yep.

pink panther prefers purple ponies

[Soup of Kings]

Neat.

I'm feeling a sudden urge to threaten my PC's with the imminent destruction of their entire campaign world by an epic-level lich on the moon. With space mummy minions.

[Ned the undead]

+10 DM points for combining zombies and spacetravel in the same plot.

[Soup of Kings]

And thus does the lich set up a Teleportation Circle, once he establishes his moon lair, and transport hordes of space mummies and zombies in spacesuits.

[Innis Cabal]

are any of you spell jammer fans forgetting the space gyspies and their constalation friends?

[jcsw]

Get a commoner/cleric 13 with a spell component pouch, the Chicken infested feat, fell animate, DMM(Fell Animate), and the spell Greater Consumptive Field.

1. Draw chicken
2. Chicken dies, giving you Str and HP
3. Chicken animated as a zombie chickent.
4. Repeat.
5. ???
6. Profit.

If you have the quick draw feat you can draw darts(material component of acid arrow) from the spell component pouch as a free action, allowing you to generate pseudo-infinite chickens in one round, also you get pseudo-infinite strength.

[Eurus]

It probably becomes much simpler if you're aiming for a city, rather than a person. Your average Lich wizard with Intelligence in the triple digits (XD) should have no problem calculating what angle to hit that asteroid from at what time to send a hundred-ton ball of flaming death right into Waterdeep.

[Recaiden]

What?

....


What?

A lich on the positive energy plane is technically really powerful. The fast healing 5 isn't technically due to positive damage, and the lich is immune to exploding because it is undead. So pretty soon your lich has all but infinite HP.

I would also like to direct attention to this:

DISTANT SHOT [EPIC]
Prerequisites: Dex 25, Far Shot, Point Blank Shot, Spot 20 ranks.

Benefit: The character may throw or fire a ranged weapon at any target within line of sight, with no penalty for range.

Get some fire proof arrows or something and shoot whoever you want. You could even create an undead creature with this as a bonus feat.

[FlyMolo]

It doesn't quite work like that. People have actually experienced loss of cabin pressure at space or near-space altitudes, and it won't blow up your eyeballs or cause you to exhale your internal organs.

Our bodies are more or less solid objects, and solid objects don't just self-destruct when exposed to vacuum.

Most stuff won't melt at earth-orbit levels of sunlight. I mean, spacecraft are made out of things like iron and they're just fine. Anything that won't melt in boiling water (or, to be safe, boiling oil) won't melt in direct sunlight in outer space.

You are completely right about cold things in space, and I surrender to your greater knowledge of vacuum. Your lungs are in a bit of a spot, though. Violent exhalation or explosion? Anyone know the force required to rip someone's ribcage in half?

Your eye fluid would definitely boil off, and your blood would boil because of radiative heating if you're in the sun, if nothing else. The sunburn would be murder.

And don't go near mercury. Ever. three kelvin on the dark side, and hot enough to melt cars on the hot side. Eesh.

[Soup of Kings]

Even with Distant Shot, though, you still need to pinpoint a target. And it wouldn't work too well except when the target is on an open plain. Tree/cloud cover and whatnot.

[FlyMolo]

Even with Distant Shot, though, you still need to pinpoint a target. And it wouldn't work too well except when the target is on an open plain. Tree/cloud cover and whatnot.

Eternal Wand of Fabricate. You're on the moon, make it into little bricks and chuck them. Arrows, even. Make a 1 pound arrows and an appropriately sized bow. The falling damage from the arrows is more than you get for having them be huge arrows. Levels out at 20d6. Which is enough to kill most people, and Adamantine only has a hardness of 20. Under a shield of adamantine 10' by 10', and 6 inches thick (Amazingly heavy, btw) It only takes about 5 arrows to break through. Average damage 70, Hardness 20 and 40 hp/inch. And they have to be gargantuan size to be heavy enough to break the 1 pound barrier, to deal damage. In fact, it's easy to argue that terminal velocity doesn't apply, and that they keep accelerating due to gravity.

And that means that your average 1 pound Gargantuan arrow deals 250000 miles of falling damage. Umm, 18 million 857 thousand 142 d6 damage. Average damage exactly 66 million. That's enough damage to burrow 833 miles into the surface. No cave's going to help you there. More than 800 miles of solid rock!

Evil moon lich mining co. "No hole too deep."

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Even with Distant Shot, though, you still need to pinpoint a target. And it wouldn't work too well except when the target is on an open plain. Tree/cloud cover and whatnot.

Homebrew a vision spell. Done.

[DMfromTheAbyss]

In response to the space gypsies comment above...
Ah the Aperusa and their ability to summon the most poorly thought out monster in any monster manual to date. (and I include the type in the MM in second edition that says cyclops's can throw boulders for 410 damage)
Constellate's had a starbolt ability that was based on their size... for every million miles or so they do 1d12 damage per blast... only problem is the minimum size put them at like 300d12 and max was in the thousands of d12's.

So if you peeved off a space gypsy instead of having a tough fight on your hands it'd blow through you your ship and leave a scar on the planet below in one shot.

Nice to see someone else remembers the good old days.

[FlyMolo]

Homebrew a vision spell. Done.

Don't bother. Scrying/Greater scrying and epic survival checks.

[Worira]

Eternal Wand of Fabricate. You're on the moon, make it into little bricks and chuck them. Arrows, even. Make a 1 pound arrows and an appropriately sized bow. The falling damage from the arrows is more than you get for having them be huge arrows. Levels out at 20d6. Which is enough to kill most people, and Adamantine only has a hardness of 20. Under a shield of adamantine 10' by 10', and 6 inches thick (Amazingly heavy, btw) It only takes about 5 arrows to break through. Average damage 70, Hardness 20 and 40 hp/inch. And they have to be gargantuan size to be heavy enough to break the 1 pound barrier, to deal damage. In fact, it's easy to argue that terminal velocity doesn't apply, and that they keep accelerating due to gravity.

And that means that your average 1 pound Gargantuan arrow deals 250000 miles of falling damage. Umm, 18 million 857 thousand 142 d6 damage. Average damage exactly 66 million. That's enough damage to burrow 833 miles into the surface. No cave's going to help you there. More than 800 miles of solid rock!

Evil moon lich mining co. "No hole too deep."

Heinlein says hi.

[FlyMolo]

Heinlein says hi.

So does the pentagon. Rods From God, it's called. Look it up, I'm not kidding.

[SamTheCleric]

So does the pentagon. Rods From God, it's called. Look it up, I'm not kidding.

Pew Pew Pew!

[Emperor Tippy]

So does the pentagon. Rods From God, it's called. Look it up, I'm not kidding.

And putting up the whole system would only cost a trillion bucks, replacing all GPS and most spy sat's at the same time as well.

[FlyMolo]

And putting up the whole system would only cost a trillion bucks, replacing all GPS and most spy sat's at the same time as well.

I didn't say it was a good idea, you'll notice. Also, why replace GPS and spy sats? There's room up there. It can't be that.

[Emperor Tippy]

I didn't say it was a good idea, you'll notice. Also, why replace GPS and spy sats? There's room up there. It can't be that.

Oh, its actually a very good idea. As for why it would replace GPS and Spy sats, the Rod satellites would be placed in the same orbit as the GPS birds and with the same density (so they can continually cover the whole world) and they need to be able to spot their targets. So it's cheaper and easier to just give them multiple roles and combine functions in 1 unit.

If you want to talk about it some more, IM me as this is off topic.

[Norsesmithy]

And putting up the whole system would only cost a trillion bucks, replacing all GPS and most spy sat's at the same time as well.

Not quite, Last I heard, the Trillion was JUST launch cost. It costs 10,000 per pound to put something in NEAR Earth Orbit. Rods From God requires a Far Earth Orbit (same as a COMSAT) to generate the energy to out yield a standard chemical weapon. And replacing an existing network with an add on to an already over weight system (14 150 lb tungsten arrows, plus guidance, plus targeting, plus power, plus ground control, etc will be quite enough, thank you) is a poor idea.

Add the cost of development for all of those systems, and you are looking at a huge chunk of change for a negligible strategic advantage. Reaction times are only marginally faster than ICBMs, and they would be easier to counterforce.

Using ground based kinetic weapons, OTOH, is a great idea, whether a KE payload on a modified ICBM body, or naval rail guns (or even massive fixed rail guns), are a more durable deterrent, with only marginally slower reaction times, that require a far smaller initial and ongoing investment.

Baring a Space Elevator.

[GoC]

And that means that your average 1 pound Gargantuan arrow deals 250000 miles of falling damage. Umm, 18 million 857 thousand 142 d6 damage. Average damage exactly 66 million. That's enough damage to burrow 833 miles into the surface. No cave's going to help you there. More than 800 miles of solid rock!

Falling damage isn't linear. The damage from 18,000 miles up isn't half that of 36,000, it's one third.