There are essentially 2 methods. 1) stopping the nukes, 2) protecting the targets.
1) 15,000 nukes / 30 rounds = 500 nukes per round. Impossible under given parameters.
There is gate. Enlist the hordes of Heaven or Hell to save the world. Use Simulacrums to put up gates all over to evacuate the populace.
I'm sure there's some way to cheat gravity to move the earth itself out of the nukes' path, or vice versa. I'm not clever enough to find it.
Alternatively, place a web of gates in front of the missiles. That depends on how close together they are, though. If you have to put up one gate per missile, barring solar shenanigans, you aren't going to be able to pull it off in time. But if the missiles are clustered a little bit...
I've enjoyed every single comment here except the ones where the more obstreperous among us feel the need to complain about the scenario itself. Personally, I think Tacticslion has some of the most entertaining solutions, but there's a lot of fun stuff here. It's funny what you come up with when you actually try.
How many of those spells can you get off in 30 rounds? eliminating 30 missles out of 15,000 isn't going to accomplish much.
At least in some edition of 3.X, quarterstaves were free. This meant that by the crafting rules, creating them took zero time. Thus, just make quarterstaves. A virtually infinite number of them. The nukes will detonate and char the jigillion quarterstaves, but enough people will survive far below the surface of the new sea of wood. And hey, not even a wizard.
I would summon the goddess of time and then trade all of my levels and items for the ability to turn back time.
Que the intro theme for "Half-minute hero" and you have yourself a campagin!
I would start off with casting Time Stop. Overland Flight, Greater Teleport, and some high level summoning would get the ball rolling after the first Time Stop. Walls of Force to trap a few missiles in their launch silos, perhaps use Chain Lightning and Magic Missiles to disable/detonate other nukes in the upper stratosphere.
All else fails, a well timed broken Staff of Power or Bag of Holding/Portable Hole combo could result in a localized space that could shunt or absorb the resulting force of some nearer nuclear weapons.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This thread.... is worthy of a year-long necro.
That's all I really have to say.
There are essentially 2 methods. 1) stopping the nukes, 2) protecting the targets.
1) 15,000 nukes / 30 rounds = 500 nukes per round. Impossible under given parameters.
There is gate. Enlist the hordes of Heaven or Hell to save the world. Use Simulacrums to put up gates all over to evacuate the populace.
I'm sure there's some way to cheat gravity to move the earth itself out of the nukes' path, or vice versa. I'm not clever enough to find it.
Alternatively, place a web of gates in front of the missiles. That depends on how close together they are, though. If you have to put up one gate per missile, barring solar shenanigans, you aren't going to be able to pull it off in time. But if the missiles are clustered a little bit...
I've enjoyed every single comment here except the ones where the more obstreperous among us feel the need to complain about the scenario itself. Personally, I think Tacticslion has some of the most entertaining solutions, but there's a lot of fun stuff here. It's funny what you come up with when you actually try.
Then that's not anything special a Wizard can do. Anyone who can get a message to a celestial could do that as that is essentially all that is happening.
"Celestial good guys, Earths in danger, can everyone with gate and teleport take a minute to help me out"
I would start off with casting Time Stop. Overland Flight, Greater Teleport, and some high level summoning would get the ball rolling after the first Time Stop. Walls of Force to trap a few missiles in their launch silos, perhaps use Chain Lightning and Magic Missiles to disable/detonate other nukes in the upper stratosphere.
All else fails, a well timed broken Staff of Power or Bag of Holding/Portable Hole combo could result in a localized space that could shunt or absorb the resulting force of some nearer nuclear weapons.
The think you greatly overestimate the range of effect of wizard spells and these effects and you haven't explained how you yourself would survive detonating one of these missiles.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Summon some sort of planar creature who be mad at the Earth blowing up. Sort of like a telephone call.
"Uh, hi. Wizard here, your house is on fire. Yeah. Yeah. Mmmhm. No like there's all the bombs- ... Okay, sure well I can't really do anything except tell you. ... No I'm not allowed to use Wish ... No I mean I'm arbitrarily not allowed to ... are you dissing my build? Screw you then I have a demiplane I can chill in- forget you"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As listed in the title; You have 30 rounds to save the world from complete destruction. The entire nuclear arsenal of the world, fifteen thousand nukes, have been launched, and is directed to burn the world in fire. All your possessions, your demiplane, and everything you possess have been teleported with you.
If you do not save the earth, you cease to exist.
You only have to save 40% of the population.
Rules:
-No Wishes (Edit: Or miracles, or similar abilities).
-You can cast spells on earth; After you finish casting spells, so can anyone else.
-After this, gods, the planes, all of it applies to earth suddenly.
-No custom magic items.
-It actually doesn't have to be wizard, but wizard seems most applicable.
-DSP materials is available. As is Spheres of Power.
-Otherwise, follow RAW. Abuse the rules in any way you can to save the world.If three minutes is not enough time, is 10? 30? What's the lowest amount of time you'd need.
You don't get to 20th level wizard by following the rules.........
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The entire nuclear arsenal of the world, fifteen thousand nukes, have been launched, and is directed to burn the world in fire. All your possessions, your demiplane, and everything you possess have been teleported with you.
<a venerable blue/black-skinned and white-haired form, quite comfortable in his recliner and suddenly-transposed living room ensemble, takes stock of his new surroundings for a few moments before coming to the conclusion that no attacks are forthcoming against his activated Emergency Force Sphere>
"Who dares to play such tricks upon me?"
If you do not save the earth, you cease to exist.
<the sylvan briefly runs mental calculations regarding the mass of a planetary body in comparison to the immolative capacity of the arsenal in question>
"That is highly unlikely, you excitable young thing!"
<he waves a hand, the hindering binds and wards of inferiors are removed, and his lamp and ottoman vanish; he smiles in knowing contentment>
"As you can see, I shall depart just as quickly as I wish, and not a moment later."
<eyelids lower slightly as dimensional anchors are reinforced around distant planar properties>
"You have not yet given me a reason to care. Do attempt to, and try not to assume that I am a summoned creature tasked to do thy bidding, for I am assuredly *not*."
<a bony hand absently strokes the muzzle fur of a bestial horror lounging comfortably beside the chair; it appraises you with glowing eyes that pierce the soul, and you grow cold as it seems to siphon life-energy>
You only have to save 40% of the population!
<he begins laughing, at first a thin, reedy rasp, then gaining in volume and timbre until a full-throated chuckle>
"Given the fecundity of these mayflies, I am quite certain that if only a fraction of 1% survived, they would again be a seething swarm in only a few short centuries.
<he fishes a shiny rectangular object from one cashmere pocket and reading spectacles from the other; his fingers flit over the artifact, its surface sparkling with shifting colors>
"You may wish to better acquaint yourself with the history of these devices and their effects, particularly in the case of the two cities which actually were targeted and destroyed by them. These two designs, among the very first, were exceptionally inefficient and subsequently spectacularly 'dirty' in the amount of lingering toxins they spewed over the countryside. Nevertheless, humans...
<he pronounces the word with palpable disdain, as if a reagent scowling at the crumpled remains of a clumsy peasant who had stumbled under his horse>
"...survived within a few hundred yards shielded by stone walls and ceilings. They crawled out and began breeding straightaway! A few of their children were deformed, but most were not, and within scant decades there were three times as many of them as before!"
<he squints at the device again, and cackles anew>
"Ha! To this day they are still dwelling in wooden buildings in scorched climes, yet are unprepared when predictable conflagrations burn down their neighborhoods."
<he shakes his head, amusement ebbing>
"These people cannot be saved from themselves, and you are keeping me from my book. Unless you can offer me an exceptionally lucrative or otherwise highly enticing reason to lend my concern, further pestering shall prompt me to acquaint you with places considerably hotter than you foolishly imagine it will become here."
<the bony hand raises in a quick flourish, and he and all depart to from whence they were brought; the familiar's eyes remain glowing for a time, disembodied, until they too vanish>
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well once you have the timeless demi plane I feel the easiest option would be to encapsulate all the nukes in a wall of force or if the dm wants to be picky about radiation prismatic sphere. That should stop about everything about the nuke The tricky part being you only have infinite time while in your demi plane if you left you would loss a round per casting assuming 500 nukes or more. not gonna work so summon or gate rather in celestials (or whatever suits you I suppose) that can use scrolls. Send them out in mass to encapsulate all the missiles. you could also use polymorph any object and turn them into food items to simultaneously cure world hunger.
Alternatively use a combination of gate and scrying to find superman and have him gather them all up for you and throw them into space or a gate to the abyss because who would even notice if you nuked the abyss? (where talking full power fly around the world to reverse time move at millions of times the speed of light superman.)
Oh, hey, I'd already posted here. Hah! I'd forgotten!
There's always the witchspam way of increasing CL: a witch with the coven hex can...Well once you have the timeless demi plane I feel the easiest option would be to encapsulate all the nukes in a wall of force or if the dm wants to be picky about radiation prismatic sphere. That should stop about everything about the nuke The tricky part being you only have infinite time while in your demi plane if you left you would loss a round per casting assuming 500 nukes or more. not gonna work so summon or gate rather in celestials (or whatever suits you I suppose) that can use scrolls. Send them out in mass to encapsulate all the missiles. you could also use polymorph any object and turn them into food items to simultaneously cure world hunger.
Alternatively use a combination of gate and scrying to find superman and have him gather them all up for you and throw them into space or a gate to the abyss because who would even notice if you nuked the abyss? (where talking full power fly around the world to reverse time move at millions of times the speed of light superman.)
A 1st Edition D&D Wall of Force should contain a nuclear blast: all the nuclear blasts, but the area of effect of a wall of force is limited, and the world's nuclear arsenals would not be released from only a single launch site, but from several all over the world targeting several points all over the world. It would require a lot of level 20 wizards with metamagic feats to cover the world with magic missiles.
I was thinking it might be funny to cast Lighten Object on the whole planet, reducing "g" for the missiles and making them all fly off into space or something. But remembering that the AoE of Lighten Object is 1 cubic foot/level, you would again need quite a few Wizards casting several metamagically enhanced Lighten Object Spells right on the Earth's core before you made an impact on g. I'm at work and don't feel at liberty to do the necessary number crunching here and now.
Ah, the death star coven. But of course.
<The excitable young thing attempts once again to enlist arcane support...>
*poof*!
<A disheveled gnome appears and looks up from an enormous workbench strewn with formula books and equipment emitting noxious fumes. His head is almost entirely obscured behind a contraption of myriad lenses and automated tools that hiss and whirr as they move on articulated limbs seemingly with a mind of their own.>
"Ey, wot's this all about, now, laddie? Be quick! Be quick! We are busy!"
The entire nuclear arsenal of the world, fifteen thousand nukes, have been launched, and is directed to burn the world in fire...
<An up-stretched hand interrupts.>
"'Earth', ey? I haven't been paying attention to that place for a long while. Too many interminable 'dark ages' where all advancement ceases. Plain lost track of them. So many other more interesting realms, you know. I wonder, have they progressed beyond cruciform steel and the horizontal bellows yet? That's where they were stuck for millennia the last time I checked in."
<He moves a pile of junk to one side, then rapidly executes a series of button presses and swipes on the workbench. A large illuminative display purrs to life under its crystalline surface.>
"Fire, hmm? Well, now, you have come to *just* the right fellow for that! 'Nukes', you say? That term I am unfamiliar with, unless you're referring to the rubber-soled shoes which seem to be all the fashion these days. Some of the chaps into electricity have been raving about the benefits of those. But anyway, we shall see what this out-of-the-way cul-de-sac world has been up to."
<Practiced hands cause shifting patterns to dance on the console.>
"Ho-ho! Look at this! Ha-ha, that's a nice one! What potential! Pity, though, that they replaced the U238 third-stage tamper with lead and robbed the experiment of half the projected yield. Hmph. How disappointing. And they appear to have ceased development not long after that. Started making them smaller and smaller, explaining it away as improvements in accuracy. Lies for public consumption, I presume. Something *clearly* scared them off...."
<Elsewhere, warning klaxons shriek in alarm as quantum polynomial shielding firewalls inside secretive installations are hacked with ease and the rich bounty of their mainframe databanks exposed for cloning by an unknown intruder whose IP cannot be traced.>
"Ahh.... So that's what they found... Yeesss.... A 'Fourth Stage', they called it. Quark-level degenerative collapse unleashing the might of a neutron stellar-core detonation! -- How many cultures across the 'verse came so far and couldn't figure it out? Or tried, only to annihilate themselves from existence without a trace. But these fellows actually managed, albeit only at the theoretical, mathematical stage. ...but then their bowels turned to water and they sealed their research away. How gripped with fear they were. And rightfully so, heh-heh...."
<Pausing to scratch the remaining strands of hair on a bald pate, the gnome is clearly talking wholly to himself at this point and ignoring you entirely.>
"1.21 gigatons, so *that* is the key number toward breaking the electron valence shell orbital energy of the carbon atom and unlocking the REAL power, -- and all easily obtainable with a sufficient quantity of Lithium-7, a fairly common element. ...A cubic-kilometer of the stuff would suffice, I should think, for the three orders of magnitude advance required over this primitive 'Tsar' mechanism. The true solutions are always as simple as they are elegant. ...Teller and Ulam, these two were right to hide what they discovered, for on such a low-mana world they would have never been able to escape."
<The gnome certainly seems to know his stuff, and while that would otherwise imply he would be ideal for solving your imminent ICBM-arrival dilemma, you cannot avoid a sense of unease. Have you made another error in your choice of gating subjects?>
"Thistlewottle, I always figured you were entirely off on the wrong track. Completely full of it. To think of all the time I've wasted trying to duplicate your worthless procedures. Your academy lectures were turgid, ropy toss as well. But instead of firing you, they claimed you were the best. But the answers fall into place at last, and it makes sense: they employed you to deliberately lead us astray. It is the only rational explanation, and I *will* see you all pay for it."
<A thick, worn volume is plucked from a shelf and unceremoniously heaved to the floor. The gnome seems pleased to see it lay there with a cracked spine. But not quite enough, as he brings his arm up and points carefully down an extended index digit.>
"Bang!"
<An incandescent beam streaks from the tip of his finger to the book, dead-center, and it explodes in a geyser of fiery confetti and acrid smoke.>
"Minimally satisfying, but only the start. Now let's get down to some *serious* work!"
<A violent sweep of his arm brusquely shoves suddenly unimportant materials off the remainder of the bench. A second display light up beside the first, and his stubby fingers move adroitly and ambidextrously in a rapid blur over both of them as if a maestro of the steam-organ were unleashed over layered banks of keys. You wait patently for many long minutes, until clearing your throat secures his attention.>
"But where are my manners? I am neglecting that which brought me as its guest."
<He lifts his headgear, which swivels upward on a hinge to rest upright above him like a weird tiara. His face is hideously scarred and burned from multiple mishaps, which you gather he must wear as a badge of pride given that healing or concealing his countenance would be trivial for one of such means.>
"*Thank* you, m' boy, for bringing all of this to my attention, for my lifelong ambitions can finally be fully realized. How *ever* could I repay you?"
<He grins wolfishly, and you are quite certain that you see flames dancing in fey pupils as it dawns upon you that he is thoroughly and murderously sociopathic, possessed of a malevolent intelligence that cares not for the plights of lower mortals. Icy dread clutches your heart. What have you done? What have you done!?>
<It dawns upon you that only divine intervention can save you now....>
Copper coins actually had a use? Who knew?
They are also conductive.
Most likely you end up with a treacherous henchman, some old property, or an extraplanar loaf that hates your guts.