lets destroy the sun

[Eldan]

Duh. You don't increase or decrease the photon's energy. You turn it sideways, into imaginary energy. That's what magic does. (Calculate that, physicists! )

[nedz]

Originally Posted by Eldan

Duh. You don't increase or decrease the photon's energy. You turn it sideways, into imaginary energy. That's what magic does. (Calculate that, physicists! )

i


(Obligatory extra text)

[panaikhan]

You don't need to destroy the sun. Just cast an 'Illusion' of destroying the sun.
Doesn't need sound, doesn't need substance (touch), doesn't need smell, doesn't need taste. Just increase the spell level to increase the area covered by this visual-only effect. High spell level = high saving throw, and only IF people viewing it have reason to disbelieve it.

[Axier]

The spell light, doesn't produce any energy.
The spell continual flame doesn't produce any energy.
The spell darkness does not say that fires go out, or energy gets dampened in its effect. At the end of the day, you just cant apply physics to this system of magic, because this is a poorly written magic system to deal with scientific function.

If anyone would like to make a scientifically accurate magic system, be my guest.


I think mass effect did a fairly decent job with its magic biotics.

[Dr Bwaa]

Originally Posted by panaikhan

You don't need to destroy the sun. Just cast an 'Illusion' of destroying the sun.
Doesn't need sound, doesn't need substance (touch), doesn't need smell, doesn't need taste. Just increase the spell level to increase the area covered by this visual-only effect. High spell level = high saving throw, and only IF people viewing it have reason to disbelieve it.

Ahahaha. This is actually perfect. I believe we have hit the solution:

• Fly as high as you can, ideally above cloud level.
• Cast Silent Image on the sky above you to make it look like nighttime.
  • Silent Image has a size of at least five 10' cubes.
  • There's no need for your illusion to have any depth, since it is only relevant if it's viewed from below.
  • Use your 10' cubes to create a flat "wall" of illusory darkness. This can be arbitrarily thin and therefore may extend arbitrarily far in all directions, as long as it lies all in one plane.
• Repeat as desired up to three more times (creating a tetrahedron around the planet; fewer castings are needed if you only need to shadow, say, a continent).
• Win.

As long as none of your minions try to interact with the sky where your illusion is, they'll keep believing it. If they end up interacting with it somehow, it's basically irrelevant, since they'll immediately pop through the other side and see the sun up there. This solution also has the entertaining side-effects of still actually allowing the sunlight to come through, so (A) the ground is still lit when it's day; dark when it's night, (B) crops still grow, (C) Vampires still can't go out at daytime, and (D) if the peasants disbelieve it (equivalent to destroying the effect--for them), that doesn't actually hinder your setup.

Achievable Level: 1 (with potions of Fly, and assuming you're okay with a duration of Concentration, though technically if WBL isn't a factor you can just use scrolls of Permanent Image anyway).
Permanent Solution Achievable Level: No later than 11 (for Permanent Image).

[2xMachina]

Originally Posted by Axier

The spell light, doesn't produce any energy.
The spell continual flame doesn't produce any energy.
The spell darkness does not say that fires go out, or energy gets dampened in its effect. At the end of the day, you just cant apply physics to this system of magic, because this is a poorly written magic system to deal with scientific function.

If anyone would like to make a scientifically accurate magic system, be my guest.


I think mass effect did a fairly decent job with its magic biotics.

You could. But you need to throw away everything you know about physics. D&D reality is 99% different from ours.

EDIT: Meaning, they have physics, but their rules are 99% different from ours.

[nedz]

I suppose you could do it with Illusionary Wall. Its only 10'x10', so you would need a lot of them, but it is permanent. A long term project for the inhabitants of the underdark perhaps ?

[Andreaz]

Originally Posted by Axier

I think mass effect did a fairly decent job with its magic biotics.

Nope! But it's easy to swallow.

[Axier]

Originally Posted by Andreaz

Nope! But it's easy to swallow.

True...

I mean, If anything, it has more accuracies than the system we are using for this discussion.

[killem2]

Is there a way to uncap:

Shrink Item?

if so, you could shrink the sun after the other ways of teleporting to it or whatever.
If not, back to the drawing board.

[Alleine]

Man, six pages and no one has even mentioned using low level Warblade and a certain notorious maneuver? It. . . it's like I don't even know you people any more.

[Eldan]

But Scent doesn't kill the sun... ;)

[nedz]

Originally Posted by Alleine

Man, six pages and no one has even mentioned using low level Warblade and a certain notorious maneuver? It. . . it's like I don't even know you people any more.

See post #4

[TypoNinja]

Originally Posted by nedz

I suppose you could do it with Illusionary Wall. Its only 10'x10', so you would need a lot of them, but it is permanent. A long term project for the inhabitants of the underdark perhaps ?

Long term my ass, this is what armies are for.

Get a few hundred casters to do some serious item creation, get a few thousand wands, hand them off, and swarm out one evening, have a continent covered by sunrise!

[nedz]

Originally Posted by TypoNinja

Long term my ass, this is what armies are for.

Get a few hundred casters to do some serious item creation, get a few thousand wands, hand them off, and swarm out one evening, have a continent covered by sunrise!

1 mile = 5,280 feet.
1 square mile requires 278,784 Illusionary Walls.
Definitely long term.

[Eldan]

Originally Posted by nedz

i


(Obligatory extra text)

Well, yes. I meant "calculate the effects of imaginary energy". An i prefix should lead to a few interesting formulae.

[Acanous]

Find a way to roll an 88 on this encounter chart.

[mattie_p]

Originally Posted by Acanous

Find a way to roll an 88 on this encounter chart.

Totally awesome find.

[dascarletm]

Originally Posted by Dr Bwaa

Ahahaha. This is actually perfect. I believe we have hit the solution:

• Fly as high as you can, ideally above cloud level.
• Cast Silent Image on the sky above you to make it look like nighttime.
  • Silent Image has a size of at least five 10' cubes.
  • There's no need for your illusion to have any depth, since it is only relevant if it's viewed from below.
  • Use your 10' cubes to create a flat "wall" of illusory darkness. This can be arbitrarily thin and therefore may extend arbitrarily far in all directions, as long as it lies all in one plane.
• Repeat as desired up to three more times (creating a tetrahedron around the planet; fewer castings are needed if you only need to shadow, say, a continent).
• Win.

As long as none of your minions try to interact with the sky where your illusion is, they'll keep believing it. If they end up interacting with it somehow, it's basically irrelevant, since they'll immediately pop through the other side and see the sun up there. This solution also has the entertaining side-effects of still actually allowing the sunlight to come through, so (A) the ground is still lit when it's day; dark when it's night, (B) crops still grow, (C) Vampires still can't go out at daytime, and (D) if the peasants disbelieve it (equivalent to destroying the effect--for them), that doesn't actually hinder your setup.

Achievable Level: 1 (with potions of Fly, and assuming you're okay with a duration of Concentration, though technically if WBL isn't a factor you can just use scrolls of Permanent Image anyway).
Permanent Solution Achievable Level: No later than 11 (for Permanent Image).

A cube, by definition has equal height width and depth.

[tuggyne]

Originally Posted by dascarletm

A cube, by definition has equal height width and depth.

To be more precise: it's not "4000 cu ft + 1000 cu ft/level", it's "four 10' cubes + one 10' cube/level (S)". The distinction is unfortunately important; you can't shape it any tighter than 10' on a given dimension (according to the usual spell shaping rules).

[panaikhan]

Originally Posted by tuggyne

To be more precise: it's not "4000 cu ft + 1000 cu ft/level", it's "four 10' cubes + one 10' cube/level (S)". The distinction is unfortunately important; you can't shape it any tighter than 10' on a given dimension (according to the usual spell shaping rules).

So research a new silent image spell, that lets you be a bit more 'creative' with the surface area, and call it a level higher...

[TypoNinja]

Originally Posted by nedz

1 mile = 5,280 feet.
1 square mile requires 278,784 Illusionary Walls.
Definitely long term.

Not so, 278,784 walls is 5,575 wands, an apprentice can drain a wand in 5 minutes. Assume an 8 hour night cycle, and one caster can drain 96 wands in a night.

58 casters to black out one square mile in one evening. 2000 1st level apprentices could black out enough space to go from horizon to horizon.

Stockpiling the wands would take forever, In fact it's probably better to craft a custom item that lets one cast Illusionary Wall at will. But once you were prepared an army of say 10k or so could make pretty good time expanding the dark area.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Originally Posted by dascarletm

A cube, by definition has equal height width and depth.

Originally Posted by tuggyne

To be more precise: it's not "4000 cu ft + 1000 cu ft/level", it's "four 10' cubes + one 10' cube/level (S)". The distinction is unfortunately important; you can't shape it any tighter than 10' on a given dimension (according to the usual spell shaping rules).

The shaping rules nuked that Idea, but it gave me a brilliant one!

Wall of stone. Unlike X image and other spells it has a clause in its spell description that allows you to thin-out the wall to increase its area. It also says you can shape it however you please as long as it's anchored to existing stone.

Here's the plan. Put a handful of Largish boulders into geo-syncronous orbit. Let's say 6 of them, two points on the three dimensional axes. You then cast wall of stone with these points as the anchors and shape it into an arbitrarily thin sheet. It'll only have a fraction of a hp per 5ft square, but you could theoretically cover an entire planet.

Thus, wall of stone can give the world a stone eggshell to block out the sun. If you want to be a bit more mindful of the physics, you could find out the limit of thinness by determining how thick a sinlge molecule of "stone" is and how many are in a sheet of the spell's normal area. This may require more anchors, more castings, and simultaneous action across the globe, but that's what craft-contingent spell and mindless constructs/undead are for.

In any case, subsequent castings to thicken the stone eggshell until its opaque will probably also be necessary.

[tuggyne]

Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera

The shaping rules nuked that Idea, but it gave me a brilliant one!

Wall of stone. Unlike X image and other spells it has a clause in its spell description that allows you to thin-out the wall to increase its area. It also says you can shape it however you please as long as it's anchored to existing stone.

Here's the plan. Put a handful of Largish boulders into geo-syncronous orbit. Let's say 6 of them, two points on the three dimensional axes. You then cast wall of stone with these points as the anchors and shape it into an arbitrarily thin sheet. It'll only have a fraction of a hp per 5ft square, but you could theoretically cover an entire planet.

Thus, wall of stone can give the world a stone eggshell to block out the sun. If you want to be a bit more mindful of the physics, you could find out the limit of thinness by determining how thick a sinlge molecule of "stone" is and how many are in a sheet of the spell's normal area. This may require more anchors, more castings, and simultaneous action across the globe, but that's what craft-contingent spell and mindless constructs/undead are for.

In any case, subsequent castings to thicken the stone eggshell until its opaque will probably also be necessary.

This falls afoul of orbital mechanics; geosynchronous orbit is an altitude at which satellites orbit at the same angular speed the earth rotates, but geostationary orbit (which you were probably referring to), in which a satellite appears to hover over a single point, is only possible within a narrow band surrounding the equator at that altitude*; any further north or south, and the orbit describes a figure-eight pattern on the ground below it as it alternates between orbiting faster and slower than the ground is rotating. So you can't have a geostationary orbit that hovers over, say, the North Pole.

I could also go into the potential physical problems of tidal forces, orbital perturbations, cosmic rays, and micrometeorites, but that should do for now.


*Tangentially, this is why competition is so fierce for geostationary orbit positions — after only fifty or so years of putting satellites there, it's already nearly full!

[Kelb_Panthera]

Originally Posted by tuggyne

This falls afoul of orbital mechanics; geosynchronous orbit is an altitude at which satellites orbit at the same angular speed the earth rotates, but geostationary orbit (which you were probably referring to), in which a satellite appears to hover over a single point, is only possible within a narrow band surrounding the equator at that altitude*; any further north or south, and the orbit describes a figure-eight pattern on the ground below it as it alternates between orbiting faster and slower than the ground is rotating. So you can't have a geostationary orbit that hovers over, say, the North Pole.

I could also go into the potential physical problems of tidal forces, orbital perturbations, cosmic rays, and micrometeorites, but that should do for now.


*Tangentially, this is why competition is so fierce for geostationary orbit positions — after only fifty or so years of putting satellites there, it's already nearly full!

I meant geo-synchronous. It doesn't matter how the anchor points move in relation to the ground at all. Only that they're stable relative to one another. The entire wall would then form already moving in such a way that all points on it are moving in geo-synchronous orbit. Tidal forces might make it wobble a bit, but as long as it doesn't come crashing down, it doesn't really need to be absolutely perfect. If there's anything to worry about it's the fact that IRL gravitational pull isn't perfectly equal at a given altitude. There are places relative to the ground that pull a bit harder than others.

I suppose this means periodic repar work would be necessary as places start to sag here and there above mountain ranges and such.

Already got an idea to help firm things up a bit. The hardening spell (ECS) or the psi-power of the same name can make the shell a bit tougher, and a clever caster could shape the wall with a grid pattern protruding slightly from it to anchor walls of force along its exterior over a period of time once it's in place.

[tuggyne]

Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera

I meant geo-synchronous. It doesn't matter how the anchor points move in relation to the ground at all. Only that they're stable relative to one another.

Sorry, I thought I'd addressed that. The problem is precisely that they won't remain at all stable relative to each other. A geosynchronous polar orbit, for example, moves perpendicular to a geosynchronous equatorial some of the time, and parallel to it some of the time; the distance between them can vary drastically (if you're lucky, perhaps only by a few hundred miles). None of the other orbits will be fundamentally any better, and there is no way to fully synchronize them.

What you would in fact need is an orbit that doesn't exist: one that describes a circle around a center point that is nowhere near the Earth's center of mass. For example, the anchor point near the Pole would need a relatively small orbit that centers somewhere along Earth's axis, but not necessarily within the crust at all. This is because you're designing a spherical cover for a (rough) sphere and making it orbit as a whole; a given unified body can only have one orbit, not the numerous disparate orbits the anchors would need to remain aloft.

Come to think of it, this is basically the problem that governs certain choices in the Dyson sphere ideas — specifically, the decision to use solar wind/light pressure to support the structure, rather than orbiting as such. Which you could do, except that Earth-like planets don't radiate much at all.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Originally Posted by tuggyne

Sorry, I thought I'd addressed that. The problem is precisely that they won't remain at all stable relative to each other. A geosynchronous polar orbit, for example, moves perpendicular to a geosynchronous equatorial some of the time, and parallel to it some of the time; the distance between them can vary drastically (if you're lucky, perhaps only by a few hundred miles). None of the other orbits will be fundamentally any better, and there is no way to fully synchronize them.

What you would in fact need is an orbit that doesn't exist: one that describes a circle around a center point that is nowhere near the Earth's center of mass. For example, the anchor point near the Pole would need a relatively small orbit that centers somewhere along Earth's axis, but not necessarily within the crust at all. This is because you're designing a spherical cover for a (rough) sphere and making it orbit as a whole; a given unified body can only have one orbit, not the numerous disparate orbits the anchors would need to remain aloft.

Come to think of it, this is basically the problem that governs certain choices in the Dyson sphere ideas — specifically, the decision to use solar wind/light pressure to support the structure, rather than orbiting as such. Which you could do, except that Earth-like planets don't radiate much at all.

I follow now, but at the same time, the choice of 6 anchor points was essentially arbitrary. You can get 2 anchors in geosynchronous or even geostationary orbit and have them stable to each other for the same net-effect. The whole wall is springing into existence in an instant in the basic version.

For the completist version start with the anchors in geostationary orbit, create a ring using the afformentioned mindless contingency carriers, and then build outward toward the poles with subsequent castings. In fact, you could build the ring up pretty massive before expanding outward to make it good and sturdy and to give it the momentum to resist gravity during the short periods that it might be a touch unstable.

[Eldan]

Hm. Where are the earth/sun Lagrange points? Maybe you could build something there.

[Malroth]

I fail to see how this is easier than having a cancer mage UMD a scroll of plane shift.

[super dark33]

Originally Posted by Harry

A: find a way to go to the elemental plane of water.

B:find a way to cast gate and keep it up permanently. (gate plus permanency is one way)

C:find a way to automatically leave the elemental plane.

First go to the elemental plane, then open up a gate to the sun. The infinite water of the plane should take out all the fire and plasma and heat of the sun....eventually.

The way to leave the plane automatically is because you don't want to be sucked into the sun.

That's one way to do it.

That would only make things worse, as shown here: LINK!