Not one minor God or demon said to themselves. Well how would that look in my safe?
And you will need far more than just one.
One to test secretly, in case it doesn't go boom.
Another to demonstrate to the rest of the world just how devastating you have become.
Another to threaten people with and maybe a back up when they test your resolve and are willing to loose a city.
The bad thing about nuclear weapons are that it becomes an industry unto itself. You have to keep making them at least at a very slow pace. You have to periodically re purify the uranium because it does have a half life and will go none critical after a specific number of years sitting on a shelf. Timers and detonators need changed out because the radiation does cause them to go bad after a period of time. They could actually accidentally go off without the correct safety systems.
The movies with nuclear weapons going off after a hundred years are wrong.
I mean, this has to be some kind of joke, because no player has ALL of the knowledge they would need to basically craft these things from absolute scratch. Modern technology is possible because of centuries of honing and improving technologies, processes, and infrastructure. You cannot make a lot of these things without stable, adjustable electricity, without metal mining and purification techniques, etc etc. It would take so incredibly long for one person to basically invent modern society from scratch that the rest of the party would just have left and finished the campaign before the character in question completed the necessary work to create modern circuitry.
Now, I believe they said they had access to "infinite timestop", which, at that point where the DM is giving things like that away, why even have a campaign? If you have access to infinite timestop, why even bother creating a fighter jet? You have infinite time and access to magic, just use that time to create the perfect version of which that can be cast as a bonus-action cantrip with no downsides or risk of losing it. You have infinite time, so that should be possible, right?
If this was my campaign I would simply end it. If you as a DM are allowing the players to simply Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A-Start their way through the campaign, then why are you playing at all?
Like others have said: It's very nice to know how much uranium constitutes critical mass, and know something about explosive compression, and that can form the basics of a bomb. But are there uranium mines? No? Well then, do you have a pick? Well, let's get to work mining out that uranium.
But it doesn't end there, does it? Maybe you can make all the fiddly bits work with gunpowder fuses, but that seems unlikely - people have enough trouble making nuclear bombs work with present tech, so you likely need some electronics.
Oh - you have copper, but are somewhat lacking in semiconductors? Oh, well, then we need to get right to work on that. Let's see, even something as basic as a vacuum tube requires a whole industry of production.
Do you know Leonardo? He had a lot of clever ideas for his time, but there wasn't any industry or materials to make those ideas real.
The simplest part of a nuclear bomb is the casing. From a D&D characters point of view, that's 300+ years of metallurgy away. You don't have the raw materials, you don't have the tooling or production capacity. Even if you had those, no one has the skills to use them. Hell, you can't even get the temperature.
If you can make a steam engine, you can do rather a lot. You can automate some very basic work like lifting or pumping. You could make automatic hammers. You could make the start of an industrial revolution.
But you're still 150 years from the basics needed for the Manhatten project.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
The other thing is, in a world where there are actual immortal races and civilizations that have been around longer than real world humans have existed, usually at least one actual deity of knowledge and classes that are int based, wouldn't all of this stuff have already been figured out? I mean, if the physics works and there are civilizations who have had the time to figure out both the physics and engineering, why have they waited for this PC to come along to have done so?
Ever seen the show Thundarr the Barbarian or played Gamma World?
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
The other thing is, in a world where there are actual immortal races and civilizations that have been around longer than real world humans have existed, usually at least one actual deity of knowledge and classes that are int based, wouldn't all of this stuff have already been figured out? I mean, if the physics works and there are civilizations who have had the time to figure out both the physics and engineering, why have they waited for this PC to come along to have done so?
Ever seen the show Thundarr the Barbarian or played Gamma World?
The former is a world literally stated to be "of magic and super science." The latter a world of psionics and super science. I honor this distinction. I also think Thundarr was one of those societies that devolved into "briefs all day every day" being an acceptable sartorial choice, like Eternia. Gamma World I don't think went that route, but I just know the cool cyborg cybertooth tiger with a warrior on it for whatever edition was on that box. I guess magic pushes a society to a furry briefs inclination where psionics tries to evolve couture.
The other thing is, in a world where there are actual immortal races and civilizations that have been around longer than real world humans have existed, usually at least one actual deity of knowledge and classes that are int based, wouldn't all of this stuff have already been figured out? I mean, if the physics works and there are civilizations who have had the time to figure out both the physics and engineering, why have they waited for this PC to come along to have done so?
Well, the typical D&D setting likes to play the "fallen empire" card; those older races usually got hit by a cataclysm a while back that pretty well destroyed the civilizations of the time. Look at Europe before and after the fall of Rome; it took centuries for cities and nations in the region to start using the same infrastructure again. Plus a typical bit with Knowledge deities is that they don't just hand out world-shaking knowledge like Halloween candy. Yes, hypothetically one could craft a setting where the big stuff has already been discovered, but it's not a glaring flaw that it hasn't been just because a great deal of time has passed. There's a lot of ways for scientific progress to be lost or simply stagnate.
Right exactly. The PCs don't necessarily know they live in a post-apocalypse world. The world they grew up in is the world they grew up in. Things that happened thousands of years ago might not matter or affect their current situation. Nobody even knows about it except maybe Elves. Or did the collapse create the Elves (mutants)?
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
First of all you were wrong to allow anything like any character to make any such futuristic weapon during pre-industrial adventures. Which is what D&D is based on. While the PC may have knowledge of how to theoretically build a bomb, his character does not and wouldn't even know how to start.
Second, the PC's are not you: They are roles that you play. Even if this was a Blackmoor campaign where there was a crashed mother ship. There may be weapons that are lasers and the fuel supply for the ship is probably a nuclear reactor, but there would be absolutely no way to recreate a reactor short of a wish
Right exactly. The PCs don't necessarily know they live in a post-apocalypse world. The world they grew up in is the world they grew up in. Things that happened thousands of years ago might not matter or affect their current situation. Nobody even knows about it except maybe Elves. Or did the collapse create the Elves (mutants)?
"Thousands of years ago." We are only in the year 2024 and look at our tech. It is less than half that since we were sitting at the tech level of a typical D&D campaign.
Scale. It matters. The only scenario where this makes any sense is if the laws of physics really are different for the campaign world. Tech did not develop because it literally does not work that way.
I was just trying to say that if you wanted to allow such an outlandish event in game, you could possibly have had the tech exist prior in the history of the campaign world.
But generally speaking the GM made a mistake and should have shut down the player right away.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
The other thing is, in a world where there are actual immortal races and civilizations that have been around longer than real world humans have existed, usually at least one actual deity of knowledge and classes that are int based, wouldn't all of this stuff have already been figured out? I mean, if the physics works and there are civilizations who have had the time to figure out both the physics and engineering, why have they waited for this PC to come along to have done so?
Well, the typical D&D setting likes to play the "fallen empire" card; those older races usually got hit by a cataclysm a while back that pretty well destroyed the civilizations of the time. Look at Europe before and after the fall of Rome; it took centuries for cities and nations in the region to start using the same infrastructure again. Plus a typical bit with Knowledge deities is that they don't just hand out world-shaking knowledge like Halloween candy. Yes, hypothetically one could craft a setting where the big stuff has already been discovered, but it's not a glaring flaw that it hasn't been just because a great deal of time has passed. There's a lot of ways for scientific progress to be lost or simply stagnate.
And the dragons (most, if not all of whom are hyper-intelligent) were just reborn yesterday? There are no surviving ancient civilizations at all? And the Gods, themselves, all simply 'forgot?'
You are very wrong about the fall of Rome. It was the opposite. One of the major factors was people learning Roman technology and deciding they could do all that themselves and not have to pay Roman tax rates (which were very high, those Legionnaires were elite troops but had elite troop price tags). The only thing really lost with the fall of Rome was democracy, but most did not miss it, since another Roman problem was having too centralized a government. Outlying regions were not really represented at all.
If the dragons know how to make steam Engines and nukes then we should be scared
In addition the only kind of dragon willing to dish out this knowledge would be the metallic ones who will kbviously see the flaws in giving out the secret recipe to Nukes and other world ending devices.
Also why are you siding with the player, we’ve given solutions and your saying no because of some crap reason about dragons or other divine entities and fallen civilisations knowing so obviously the player knows
If the dragons know how to make steam Engines and nukes then we should be scared
In addition the only kind of dragon willing to dish out this knowledge would be the metallic ones who will kbviously see the flaws in giving out the secret recipe to Nukes and other world ending devices.
Also why are you siding with the player, we’ve given solutions and your saying no because of some crap reason about dragons or other divine entities and fallen civilisations knowing so obviously the player knows
Btw phone keyboards suck
This is not siding with the player. This is pointing out the logical ramifications to the PC merely being allowed to have such knowledge, if so allowed.
1) Dragons are just a convenient example. There are plenty of other long lived or immortal races out there. IIRC, Strahd is a little over 400, but there are almost certainly older liches out there. Elves live into their 700's and were not born yesterday, as a race. That is less than three Elven generations for the entire real world history, AD. About 5 generations for gnomes, 6 for dwarves. Longer lives mean longer time to achieve progress.
2) The related point is no that the PC knows. It is that ALL major civilizations would know. Thus, if the PC knows, guess what? They know in the same context as knowing in the real world. They do not have exclusive knowledge. Strategic resources are owned, controlled. One cannot simply 'go out and find uranium,' because governments already do that on an industrial scale, jealously hoarding it for the same reasons they do in real life. Civilizations which do not know would be controlled by those who do. It would already be, in effect, a modern world setting, with modern world style economics and politics, not easy for the PC to exploit at all, even if they really do have all the knowledge that player claims to have.
Opposing factions have such technology in our world. So far, such weapons have not been actually used. And as I pointed out in one of the other posts, in a world where magic works there are relatively easy counter-measures.
Again, though, longevity does not guarantee technological progression. If we set the way-back machine for several millennia, you’ll see incremental progress interspersed with periodic setbacks as knowledge becomes lost for one reason or another. Unless a given race somehow established a perfect utopia right out of the gate, they’ll be subject to the same issues. Plus real development isn’t like a game of Civilization where breakthroughs simply occur one after the other. The various branches of science did not develop concurrently, so the people with the metallurgy to make gun barrels aren’t necessarily going to have the chemistry to make gunpowder, or vice-versa.
Dude I’m confused on why characters are given the ability to create things if it’s the player that has the knowledge on how to do so in the first place which caused all this. Surely because the character and player are separate that clearly shows that the character wouldn’t know how to make the things the player knows. By that logic a Half-Orc Barbarian with a -2 to Intelligence could create a working PC with the right materials as the player knows how, which makes no sense whatsoever. Where did he obtain that knowledge, did he just spawn into the world with it? And on the other hand, there might be a skilled Artificer character famed for inventions, but can’t make stuff that goes beyond their clearly stated class features and proficiencies, just because the player is unaware? I’m fully on the side of the DM as the player seems to be abusing a rule they knew was flimsy, especially since they can’t technically prove that they can make all the things they claim they can, but it was a really awful rule to begin with that caused the issues.
If the dragons know how to make steam Engines and nukes then we should be scared
In addition the only kind of dragon willing to dish out this knowledge would be the metallic ones who will kbviously see the flaws in giving out the secret recipe to Nukes and other world ending devices.
Also why are you siding with the player, we’ve given solutions and your saying no because of some crap reason about dragons or other divine entities and fallen civilisations knowing so obviously the player knows
Btw phone keyboards suck
This is not siding with the player. This is pointing out the logical ramifications to the PC merely being allowed to have such knowledge, if so allowed.
1) Dragons are just a convenient example. There are plenty of other long lived or immortal races out there. IIRC, Strahd is a little over 400, but there are almost certainly older liches out there. Elves live into their 700's and were not born yesterday, as a race. That is less than three Elven generations for the entire real world history, AD. About 5 generations for gnomes, 6 for dwarves. Longer lives mean longer time to achieve progress.
2) The related point is no that the PC knows. It is that ALL major civilizations would know. Thus, if the PC knows, guess what? They know in the same context as knowing in the real world. They do not have exclusive knowledge. Strategic resources are owned, controlled. One cannot simply 'go out and find uranium,' because governments already do that on an industrial scale, jealously hoarding it for the same reasons they do in real life. Civilizations which do not know would be controlled by those who do. It would already be, in effect, a modern world setting, with modern world style economics and politics, not easy for the PC to exploit at all, even if they really do have all the knowledge that player claims to have.
Opposing factions have such technology in our world. So far, such weapons have not been actually used. And as I pointed out in one of the other posts, in a world where magic works there are relatively easy counter-measures.
Again, though, longevity does not guarantee technological progression. If we set the way-back machine for several millennia, you’ll see incremental progress interspersed with periodic setbacks as knowledge becomes lost for one reason or another. Unless a given race somehow established a perfect utopia right out of the gate, they’ll be subject to the same issues. Plus real development isn’t like a game of Civilization where breakthroughs simply occur one after the other. The various branches of science did not develop concurrently, so the people with the metallurgy to make gun barrels aren’t necessarily going to have the chemistry to make gunpowder, or vice-versa.
It is true. The long lived races could literally have been born yesterday. Or they could all, on a racial level, inexplicably be complete luddites, either too stupid to develop tech or just enjoy staring at walls and living in cold castles too much. Metallurgy, they already have, to levels arguably superior to us (we have no fantasy metals and are limited to real world metals. Heck, in our world, silver is a lousy weapons material, regardless of how high grade!).
It is not just that they live longer, but that, unless the longer lived races are only a couple generations old, they either predate humans by a long ways, or humans have also been around that long.
Edit: Note, the main argument I have been making is that the ramifications for such tech working are way too much of a pain for any DM to deal with and likely not what they intend for a campaign at all. Which is a reason not to allow tech to work, at least not in real world terms.
You’re the dm. You can decide if the elves or others have that technology, they probably won’t though.
In addition humans have been around for 6m years (google said that) and only in the last like 150 years have we got the technology that the player is trying to make. Even if elves live 700 years that doesn’t mean they’ll have all the fun stuff like guns and bombs.
If the dragons know how to make steam Engines and nukes then we should be scared
In addition the only kind of dragon willing to dish out this knowledge would be the metallic ones who will kbviously see the flaws in giving out the secret recipe to Nukes and other world ending devices.
Also why are you siding with the player, we’ve given solutions and your saying no because of some crap reason about dragons or other divine entities and fallen civilisations knowing so obviously the player knows
Btw phone keyboards suck
This is not siding with the player. This is pointing out the logical ramifications to the PC merely being allowed to have such knowledge, if so allowed.
1) Dragons are just a convenient example. There are plenty of other long lived or immortal races out there. IIRC, Strahd is a little over 400, but there are almost certainly older liches out there. Elves live into their 700's and were not born yesterday, as a race. That is less than three Elven generations for the entire real world history, AD. About 5 generations for gnomes, 6 for dwarves. Longer lives mean longer time to achieve progress.
2) The related point is no that the PC knows. It is that ALL major civilizations would know. Thus, if the PC knows, guess what? They know in the same context as knowing in the real world. They do not have exclusive knowledge. Strategic resources are owned, controlled. One cannot simply 'go out and find uranium,' because governments already do that on an industrial scale, jealously hoarding it for the same reasons they do in real life. Civilizations which do not know would be controlled by those who do. It would already be, in effect, a modern world setting, with modern world style economics and politics, not easy for the PC to exploit at all, even if they really do have all the knowledge that player claims to have.
Opposing factions have such technology in our world. So far, such weapons have not been actually used. And as I pointed out in one of the other posts, in a world where magic works there are relatively easy counter-measures.
Again, though, longevity does not guarantee technological progression. If we set the way-back machine for several millennia, you’ll see incremental progress interspersed with periodic setbacks as knowledge becomes lost for one reason or another. Unless a given race somehow established a perfect utopia right out of the gate, they’ll be subject to the same issues. Plus real development isn’t like a game of Civilization where breakthroughs simply occur one after the other. The various branches of science did not develop concurrently, so the people with the metallurgy to make gun barrels aren’t necessarily going to have the chemistry to make gunpowder, or vice-versa.
It is true. The long lived races could literally have been born yesterday. Or they could all, on a racial level, inexplicably be complete luddites, either too stupid to develop tech or just enjoy staring at walls and living in cold castles too much. Metallurgy, they already have, to levels arguably superior to us (we have no fantasy metals and are limited to real world metals. Heck, in our world, silver is a lousy weapons material, regardless of how high grade!).
It is not just that they live longer, but that, unless the longer lived races are only a couple generations old, they either predate humans by a long ways, or humans have also been around that long.
Edit: Note, the main argument I have been making is that the ramifications for such tech working are way too much of a pain for any DM to deal with and likely not what they intend for a campaign at all. Which is a reason not to allow tech to work, at least not in real world terms.
You’re the dm. You can decide if the elves or others have that technology, they probably won’t though.
In addition humans have been around for 6m years (google said that) and only in the last like 150 years have we got the technology that the player is trying to make. Even if elves live 700 years that doesn’t mean they’ll have all the fun stuff like guns and bombs.
Google is wrong. Hominids have been around about that long, but our species came about only no earlier than 100,000 years ago.
If the dragons know how to make steam Engines and nukes then we should be scared
In addition the only kind of dragon willing to dish out this knowledge would be the metallic ones who will kbviously see the flaws in giving out the secret recipe to Nukes and other world ending devices.
Also why are you siding with the player, we’ve given solutions and your saying no because of some crap reason about dragons or other divine entities and fallen civilisations knowing so obviously the player knows
Btw phone keyboards suck
This is not siding with the player. This is pointing out the logical ramifications to the PC merely being allowed to have such knowledge, if so allowed.
1) Dragons are just a convenient example. There are plenty of other long lived or immortal races out there. IIRC, Strahd is a little over 400, but there are almost certainly older liches out there. Elves live into their 700's and were not born yesterday, as a race. That is less than three Elven generations for the entire real world history, AD. About 5 generations for gnomes, 6 for dwarves. Longer lives mean longer time to achieve progress.
2) The related point is no that the PC knows. It is that ALL major civilizations would know. Thus, if the PC knows, guess what? They know in the same context as knowing in the real world. They do not have exclusive knowledge. Strategic resources are owned, controlled. One cannot simply 'go out and find uranium,' because governments already do that on an industrial scale, jealously hoarding it for the same reasons they do in real life. Civilizations which do not know would be controlled by those who do. It would already be, in effect, a modern world setting, with modern world style economics and politics, not easy for the PC to exploit at all, even if they really do have all the knowledge that player claims to have.
Opposing factions have such technology in our world. So far, such weapons have not been actually used. And as I pointed out in one of the other posts, in a world where magic works there are relatively easy counter-measures.
Again, though, longevity does not guarantee technological progression. If we set the way-back machine for several millennia, you’ll see incremental progress interspersed with periodic setbacks as knowledge becomes lost for one reason or another. Unless a given race somehow established a perfect utopia right out of the gate, they’ll be subject to the same issues. Plus real development isn’t like a game of Civilization where breakthroughs simply occur one after the other. The various branches of science did not develop concurrently, so the people with the metallurgy to make gun barrels aren’t necessarily going to have the chemistry to make gunpowder, or vice-versa.
It is true. The long lived races could literally have been born yesterday. Or they could all, on a racial level, inexplicably be complete luddites, either too stupid to develop tech or just enjoy staring at walls and living in cold castles too much. Metallurgy, they already have, to levels arguably superior to us (we have no fantasy metals and are limited to real world metals. Heck, in our world, silver is a lousy weapons material, regardless of how high grade!).
It is not just that they live longer, but that, unless the longer lived races are only a couple generations old, they either predate humans by a long ways, or humans have also been around that long.
Edit: Note, the main argument I have been making is that the ramifications for such tech working are way too much of a pain for any DM to deal with and likely not what they intend for a campaign at all. Which is a reason not to allow tech to work, at least not in real world terms.
You’re the dm. You can decide if the elves or others have that technology, they probably won’t though.
In addition humans have been around for 6m years (google said that) and only in the last like 150 years have we got the technology that the player is trying to make. Even if elves live 700 years that doesn’t mean they’ll have all the fun stuff like guns and bombs.
Google is wrong. Hominids have been around about that long, but our species came about only no earlier than 100,000 years ago.
Google home told me 300000 then google told me 6m and 3m and whatnot. Even then elves wouldn’t have that kind of technology
Yeah, no. The Genus Homo meaning Man dades back to 1.8 Million years ago if you begin it at H. Ergastor and at 2.5 Million years ago if you begin it at H. Habilus.
What Science currently calls 'Anatomically Correct Homo Sapiens' begin about 0.3 Million years ago (that's 300K [315K to be most exact with the origins]). However, back in the day, we called these Cromagnons instead; a contemporary of Neanderthals. We didn't start calling folks 'Homo sapiens' until we had evidence of actual sapience, which we call 'Behavioral Modernity'. Sparks of which notwithstanding, this is not typically found until after the Toba catastrophe 74K years ago with cave paintings beginning about 65Kya and only becoming prominent within the last 40K-25K years.
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And all this time you kept your plans secret?
Not one minor God or demon said to themselves. Well how would that look in my safe?
And you will need far more than just one.
One to test secretly, in case it doesn't go boom.
Another to demonstrate to the rest of the world just how devastating you have become.
Another to threaten people with and maybe a back up when they test your resolve and are willing to loose a city.
The bad thing about nuclear weapons are that it becomes an industry unto itself. You have to keep making them at least at a very slow pace.
You have to periodically re purify the uranium because it does have a half life and will go none critical after a specific number of years sitting on a shelf.
Timers and detonators need changed out because the radiation does cause them to go bad after a period of time. They could actually accidentally go off without the correct safety systems.
The movies with nuclear weapons going off after a hundred years are wrong.
Dnd naughty corner. Give him a slap on the wrist and tell his to play nice or not play at all 😊
Characters (Links!):
Faelin Nighthollow - 7th Sojourn
I mean, this has to be some kind of joke, because no player has ALL of the knowledge they would need to basically craft these things from absolute scratch. Modern technology is possible because of centuries of honing and improving technologies, processes, and infrastructure. You cannot make a lot of these things without stable, adjustable electricity, without metal mining and purification techniques, etc etc. It would take so incredibly long for one person to basically invent modern society from scratch that the rest of the party would just have left and finished the campaign before the character in question completed the necessary work to create modern circuitry.
Now, I believe they said they had access to "infinite timestop", which, at that point where the DM is giving things like that away, why even have a campaign? If you have access to infinite timestop, why even bother creating a fighter jet? You have infinite time and access to magic, just use that time to create the perfect version of which that can be cast as a bonus-action cantrip with no downsides or risk of losing it. You have infinite time, so that should be possible, right?
If this was my campaign I would simply end it. If you as a DM are allowing the players to simply Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A-Start their way through the campaign, then why are you playing at all?
Like others have said: It's very nice to know how much uranium constitutes critical mass, and know something about explosive compression, and that can form the basics of a bomb. But are there uranium mines? No? Well then, do you have a pick? Well, let's get to work mining out that uranium.
But it doesn't end there, does it? Maybe you can make all the fiddly bits work with gunpowder fuses, but that seems unlikely - people have enough trouble making nuclear bombs work with present tech, so you likely need some electronics.
Oh - you have copper, but are somewhat lacking in semiconductors? Oh, well, then we need to get right to work on that. Let's see, even something as basic as a vacuum tube requires a whole industry of production.
Do you know Leonardo? He had a lot of clever ideas for his time, but there wasn't any industry or materials to make those ideas real.
The simplest part of a nuclear bomb is the casing. From a D&D characters point of view, that's 300+ years of metallurgy away. You don't have the raw materials, you don't have the tooling or production capacity. Even if you had those, no one has the skills to use them. Hell, you can't even get the temperature.
If you can make iron, you can make a steam engine. This design, here, on wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine
If you can make a steam engine, you can do rather a lot. You can automate some very basic work like lifting or pumping. You could make automatic hammers. You could make the start of an industrial revolution.
But you're still 150 years from the basics needed for the Manhatten project.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Do atoms even exist as we know them?
Perhaps there are atoms, but they are of earth, water, fire, and air (and maybe salt, minerals, ash, etc.)
Ever seen the show Thundarr the Barbarian or played Gamma World?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
The former is a world literally stated to be "of magic and super science." The latter a world of psionics and super science. I honor this distinction. I also think Thundarr was one of those societies that devolved into "briefs all day every day" being an acceptable sartorial choice, like Eternia. Gamma World I don't think went that route, but I just know the cool cyborg cybertooth tiger with a warrior on it for whatever edition was on that box. I guess magic pushes a society to a furry briefs inclination where psionics tries to evolve couture.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Well, the typical D&D setting likes to play the "fallen empire" card; those older races usually got hit by a cataclysm a while back that pretty well destroyed the civilizations of the time. Look at Europe before and after the fall of Rome; it took centuries for cities and nations in the region to start using the same infrastructure again. Plus a typical bit with Knowledge deities is that they don't just hand out world-shaking knowledge like Halloween candy. Yes, hypothetically one could craft a setting where the big stuff has already been discovered, but it's not a glaring flaw that it hasn't been just because a great deal of time has passed. There's a lot of ways for scientific progress to be lost or simply stagnate.
I like Gamma World. It was pretty unique in its setting, for the time it came out.
I am actually thinking of combining it with a different game and running a whole new style of adventure. Sci fi based.
Right exactly. The PCs don't necessarily know they live in a post-apocalypse world. The world they grew up in is the world they grew up in. Things that happened thousands of years ago might not matter or affect their current situation. Nobody even knows about it except maybe Elves. Or did the collapse create the Elves (mutants)?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
First of all you were wrong to allow anything like any character to make any such futuristic weapon during pre-industrial adventures. Which is what D&D is based on. While the PC may have knowledge of how to theoretically build a bomb, his character does not and wouldn't even know how to start.
Second, the PC's are not you: They are roles that you play. Even if this was a Blackmoor campaign where there was a crashed mother ship. There may be weapons that are lasers and the fuel supply for the ship is probably a nuclear reactor, but there would be absolutely no way to recreate a reactor short of a wish
I was just trying to say that if you wanted to allow such an outlandish event in game, you could possibly have had the tech exist prior in the history of the campaign world.
But generally speaking the GM made a mistake and should have shut down the player right away.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
If the dragons know how to make steam Engines and nukes then we should be scared
In addition the only kind of dragon willing to dish out this knowledge would be the metallic ones who will kbviously see the flaws in giving out the secret recipe to Nukes and other world ending devices.
Also why are you siding with the player, we’ve given solutions and your saying no because of some crap reason about dragons or other divine entities and fallen civilisations knowing so obviously the player knows
Btw phone keyboards suck
Characters (Links!):
Faelin Nighthollow - 7th Sojourn
And people wonder why i dislike technology in D&D.
Or why I dislike long lived races with no racial disadvantages.
Again, though, longevity does not guarantee technological progression. If we set the way-back machine for several millennia, you’ll see incremental progress interspersed with periodic setbacks as knowledge becomes lost for one reason or another. Unless a given race somehow established a perfect utopia right out of the gate, they’ll be subject to the same issues. Plus real development isn’t like a game of Civilization where breakthroughs simply occur one after the other. The various branches of science did not develop concurrently, so the people with the metallurgy to make gun barrels aren’t necessarily going to have the chemistry to make gunpowder, or vice-versa.
Dude I’m confused on why characters are given the ability to create things if it’s the player that has the knowledge on how to do so in the first place which caused all this. Surely because the character and player are separate that clearly shows that the character wouldn’t know how to make the things the player knows. By that logic a Half-Orc Barbarian with a -2 to Intelligence could create a working PC with the right materials as the player knows how, which makes no sense whatsoever. Where did he obtain that knowledge, did he just spawn into the world with it? And on the other hand, there might be a skilled Artificer character famed for inventions, but can’t make stuff that goes beyond their clearly stated class features and proficiencies, just because the player is unaware? I’m fully on the side of the DM as the player seems to be abusing a rule they knew was flimsy, especially since they can’t technically prove that they can make all the things they claim they can, but it was a really awful rule to begin with that caused the issues.
Xaul Lackluster: Half-Orc Fathomless Warlock: Warlock Dragon Heist
Borvnir Chelvnich: Black Dragonborn Barbarian: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle
Pushover Gerilwitz: Tiefling Wizard: Acquisitions Incorporated
Callow Sunken-Eyes: Goliath Arctic Druid: We Are Modron
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You’re the dm. You can decide if the elves or others have that technology, they probably won’t though.
In addition humans have been around for 6m years (google said that) and only in the last like 150 years have we got the technology that the player is trying to make. Even if elves live 700 years that doesn’t mean they’ll have all the fun stuff like guns and bombs.
Characters (Links!):
Faelin Nighthollow - 7th Sojourn
Google is wrong. Hominids have been around about that long, but our species came about only no earlier than 100,000 years ago.
Google home told me 300000 then google told me 6m and 3m and whatnot. Even then elves wouldn’t have that kind of technology
Characters (Links!):
Faelin Nighthollow - 7th Sojourn
Yeah, no. The Genus Homo meaning Man dades back to 1.8 Million years ago if you begin it at H. Ergastor and at 2.5 Million years ago if you begin it at H. Habilus.
What Science currently calls 'Anatomically Correct Homo Sapiens' begin about 0.3 Million years ago (that's 300K [315K to be most exact with the origins]). However, back in the day, we called these Cromagnons instead; a contemporary of Neanderthals. We didn't start calling folks 'Homo sapiens' until we had evidence of actual sapience, which we call 'Behavioral Modernity'. Sparks of which notwithstanding, this is not typically found until after the Toba catastrophe 74K years ago with cave paintings beginning about 65Kya and only becoming prominent within the last 40K-25K years.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.