The Decanter Mage: Weaponizing Decanters of Endless Water

[blackbloodtroll]

Craft checks are based off value.

So, you only get an "impossibly high" Craft DC, with a "impossibly high" priced item.

Depending on the size, and quality of the diamond, this could be so.

[Dave Justus]

Craft DCs are not based on value. There is no directly applicable DC listed in the table for crafting coal into diamond. It would be a GM call. I would set it at about 1000.

[Scott Wilhelm]

You can specify that you are making Salt Water. The Decanter allows that.

You use Fabricate to extract the Sodium from the water.

The Chlorine left over will force the generation of hydronium ions into the solution, and you have your acid: hydrochloric acid.

The salt water is the raw material. The acid is the finished product. That satisfies Dave Justus's 1-ingredient requirement.

[Dave Justus]

Actually 'my' requirement is one thing into something else made of the same thing. You could fabricate salt water into something that was made out of salt water. The finished thing would still have to be composed of the material 'salt water.' I don't know what that would be, as salt water is a poor building material, but it is what the spell does.

It doesn't do molecular chemistry.

[Scott Wilhelm]

I want you to quote the rule that says it doesn't do molecular chemistry!

It says it turns raw materials into finished products. Accepting that it only works with 1 ingredient, and accepting that cotton/polyester cloth as 1 ingredient. I insist that salt water is 1 ingredient, and acid is a finished product. A craft check is required. A goldpiece value's worth of alchemal materials must be present and will be consumed in the magical way that magic does must be present.

It satisfies the requirements and the rules!

[blackbloodtroll]

That would be weird, if you used an apple tree to create a wooden boat, but you had to include the apples into the boat.

[Dave Justus]

Again, the spell says: You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material.

of the same material.

Acid is not salt water. Yes, chemical reactions can convert salt water into acid, but the spell doesn't do that. It makes wooden things out of wood, stone things out of stone, or cotton-poly blend t-shirts out of cotton-poly blend cloth.

The product has to be the same substance as the original material. It is plain English.

[Tiny Coffee Golem]

There are entire threads devoted to what fabricate can and can't do. Please take this side conversation to one of those.

[kestral287]

Shiroi wrote:

In theory you could put as many as you could safely fit and protect from transportation inside an adamantium box, find the pressure with which water is coming from the decanters, and build a hatch or sliding door capable of withstanding the maximum pressure these decanters can output into the box. If the decanters pour that much water, regardless of pressure, then this makes a *ridiculously powerful* bomb. If they have a pressure limit, then you don't need to bother with a way to drain the water, they'll eventually pressurize the vessel and be stuck "trying" to pour water. When you open the door, the pressure drains and all of them are now firing from a single location. I'm uncertain what magic could be used to prevent the Bomb scenario if they do not have a maximum PSI. Some sort of drain assembly feels needed in that case, but you'll be flooding local farms on the way through at that point. A hole in the bottom small enough to keep the block pressurized but large enough to keep them from exceeding the burst strength of the block could be placed just above some form of planar gate, (to the elemental plane of fire is you wanna really tick off the next Elder Elemental you meet) to prevent a global flood warning.

I'm not exactly as up to snuff on my physics as I probably should be... but in a situation where the decanters keep pouring regardless of pressure, if you could actually contain it wouldn't it eventually undergo nuclear fusion?

Admittedly before you hit that point adamantium might not be enough to contain it.

[Azothath]

on converting water into something - depending on your GM and his knowledge of chemistry or physics, you could try water(HOH) to hydrogen peroxide(HOHO). Peroxide is rather unstable stuff when it meets a little platinum (acts as a catalyst). You could just go the basic route of 2HOH to 2HH & OO.

on flow rate, given a steady flow one can reduce the aperture (size of the hole it must flow through) and thus the pressure will go up. Q=v(flow velocity)*A(cross sectional area that the flow must go through). The area of a circle is (pi)*r*r (where r is the radius). Pressure rise and flow rate is proportional. Halving the radius of the opening quadruples the outgoing pressure.
Yes - you can easily create a water cutter that cuts steel or a jet engine based on water. In fact a tiny tiny hole may require relativistic equations as the velocity reaches 3E8m/s (speed of light).
You can determine the original pressure by assuming that the decanter is held horizontal to the earth at the average height of a human knowing the distance the stream shoots (gravity is pulling it down to the earth). So you don't really need to know the exact size of the opening. Talk to your physics teacher or research the equations.

IMO there are several GM caveats;
1) outgoing pressure cannot exceed the source on the plane of water from where the water is drawn.
2) super high pressure is going to destroy your custom plug. So you'll need a hole in diamond or corundum.
3) back pressure may destroy the decanter as it is not designed to operate at high pressure.
4) SOMEONE is going to notice your tampering. There is no free lunch.

[Cussune]

Any chlorine golems in the thread yet? This is starting to feel like old conversations I remember about creating atomic material for bombs or antimatter.

I stand by nixie artillery as the solution to the question at hand. It could work with the rules and is hilarious. Second option: custom magic item, the FLUDD from Super Mario Sunshine.

[maouse33]

Necroing this thread for the following:

Weapon Song from the Skald Spell Warrior states:
"If an affected weapon is not magical, at least a +1 enhancement bonus must be added before any other special abilities can be."

A Decanter of Endless water is a weapon, as it does damage.

Thus the Weapon Song applies. You can make FLAMING WATER. LOL. 1d6 fire, 1d4 water damage. No attack roll is needed. At higher levels you can add other things like Ghost Touch, etc... from Weapon Song.

Get a bunch and they all can take on 2d6 elemental damage for a nice little BOOST to damage.

Ring that COWBELL my Spell Warriors! Clang CLANG CLANG! More COWBELL!

[VoodistMonk]

Flaming Water is hilarious. I don't know if the Decanter of Endless Water qualifies as a weapon for the Spell Warrior's Weapon Song simply because it can deal damage. I think it's more a warning lable to not have the thing pointed at your own face when you open it, or to avoid trying to drink from one (it's a fire hydrant, not a drinking fountain).

Either way, I still like the water Kineticist the best when it comes to weaponizing an endless supply of water. Along the same lines as the Kineticist, an Undine Watersinger Bard can do the whole water-bending thing, too. Both the Kineticist and the aforementioned Bard can end up doing a lot more with water than just damaging enemies, which is probably more important in the long run... although possibly not in this particular thread about weaponizing something.

If Weapon Song does apply to the Decanter of Endless Water, then having a Spell Warrior backing up a Kineticist or Watersinger Bard could be a pretty epic weaponization of said decanter.

[Ryze Kuja]

I'm trying to think of a way to put 4 endless decanters of water sovereign glued together as a single item, and then shrunk or shapechanged with Shrink Item or Polymorph Any Object into something you could trick someone into swallowing, like tricking your dog by putting medicine/pills wrapped in doggie treats. Once you're ready for this guy to die, Dispel/End the Polymorph/Shrink spell and speak the command word inside their stomach somehow.

Shrink Item and Polymorph Any Object won't work though... and you can't open the stopper inside their stomach without speaking a command word (the command word would probably be required to be spoken while inside the stomach)... hrrmm...

This would work vs. colossal-sized, low-Int targets that have swallow whole... just trick the monster into swallowing YOU whole and then once you're in their stomach you activate this Endless Water bomb and D.Door out to safety...

[Mudfoot]

Nice idea, but I expect the decanter(s) wouldn't last long inside something like a Tarrasque. You'd need to make them out of something fairly substantial, like adamantium.
Each decanter produces 30 gallons per round, which is only 240 lbs (assuming US Gallon), which is only one fat medium-sized creature. I expect there's enough room in a Colossal creature to handle quite a few. I guess it would be making increasing Fortitude saves against Sickened (and damage), then Nauseated, and then bring up a lot of water, quite possibly vomiting the decanter out too (if it's survived that long).
Some monsters might not be able to vomit (like a rat or rabbit) so they'd be the ideal target. Messy though.