So, my players, through a bunch of shenanigans were able to drop an artifact (that has an ancient gold shadow dragon inside of it) into the sun. It is now at the center of the sun. What would happen if I used the gate spell in the astral plane to take the artifact out of the sun (saying the creature's name) before ending concentration immediately after the artifact appears? How long will the area be doing damage?
However many you want it to do, there's no reason to think that the sun in the D&D universe is like the sun in ours. I would treat it as a portal to the elemental plane of fire.
If you want to be genuinely realistic and true to our own sun, the sun's gravity would instantaneously rip the planet apart due to gravity. But you wouldn't be around to see it, as the heat would destroy you before the pain could register.
The suns core is 15,000,000°C, or thereabouts. It's not going to be pleasant.
Assuming you go for the smallest diameter, you've got a 5 foot diameter disc which is opening onto liquid hydrogen at 15,000,000°C and 265,000,000,000 Bar.
We can assume that the magical portal is going to have no resistance to go through it, and even if it did, at these pressures it's going to be negligible.
In 1 second, you will have channeled 4,182,768,456 litres of sun into your immediate vicinity. This will form a cylindrical "laser" of immensely high pressure, high temperature hydrogen, which will be 6,032,223,125 feet long. That's 1,142,466.5 miles, or 1,838,621.6km long. If you opened this portal pointing in the right direction, you will have hit the moon after a third of a second.
But then it gets worse.
Every litre of sun you've poured out in this one, monumental lapse in judgement weighs 150kg (330lb). Imagine a 2-litre bottle which weighs as much as a large motorbike. Yeah, you've got billions of them. Assuming that the portal is pointing upwards (to try and vent into space), and that the portal is magically anchored to the planet, then you've just accelerated a mass of 627,415,268,343kg away from earth an average distance of 3,016,111,562 feet. The recoil of this (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) is 576789634843671000000N of force, which is like suddenly dropping 58,796,089,000,000,000,000kg onto the planet, which would probably crack it in half.
But then it gets worse.
Those astute scientific folk out there will have noticed that I'm treating this like it's a solid. It is in fact a liquid, composed of hydrogen at a pressure 265,000,000,000 times greater than the atmosphere at sea level. It's going to expand. In fact, this much hydrogen will form a bubble at a pressure of 1 bar of 265,000,000,000 times larger than in it's compressed state. This makes a bubble which is 3.13x10^22 cubic feet, which is 1% of the volume of the earth, released in 1 second.
But then it gets worse.
Remember when I said that the temperature was 15,000,000°C? I do!
At this pressure and temperature, and suddenly released, it's going to all undergo nuclear fusion. At once. Fusing one kilogram of hydrogen into helium releases 630 trillion joules of energy, so fusing just half of what we've got will release 2x10^26 joules of energy. Hiroshima was 1.32x10^13 joules, so you've released 13,175,720,635,206 Hiroshima Bombs somewhere within 60ft. of yourself.
Now, in D&D terms, we can take bludgeoning damage as a baseline. Falling 10ft. deals 1d6, for an average 100kg person (assuming armour) that's about 3000 Joules of energy. So if we divide this by the energy you're releasing, we get an approximation of 6,500,000,000,000,000,000,000d6 damage, for an average of 250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 damage, or half as much on a successful save.
Dex saves, please?
However, you can survive it - with magic!
Leomund's Tiny Hut states:
"The atmosphere inside the space is comfortable and dry, regardless of the weather outside."
So, in a strange contrast to most dangerous things - if you're going to do this, do it inside!
Are you an astrophysicist or did you spend the time to look this all up and summarize it for everyone?
The second one!
I love physics and enjoy applying it to the ludicrous scenarios d&d sometimes brings up, so had a good idea that this would be pretty bad for the world in general. I'm also a fan of XKCD and their "what if?" section!
Also, it's worth noting that this scenario isn't the worst case - if you used a 20ft portal, you'd have 16 times the effect!
Now, the warlock that I want to do this will have a boon of invincibility and could be doing this in the Astral plane. If he negates the initial damage, will there be any fallout that he will die to later? The portal will be instantly closing once the artifact flies through instantaneously.
So, my players, through a bunch of shenanigans were able to drop an artifact (that has an ancient gold shadow dragon inside of it) into the sun. It is now at the center of the sun. What would happen if I used the gate spell in the astral plane to take the artifact out of the sun (saying the creature's name) before ending concentration immediately after the artifact appears? How long will the area be doing damage?
Wow I'm so excited this thread exists. I've been trying calculate this for months now, so way as well share my estimate.
The first way would be looking at the temperature. The core of the sun is approximately 15 million Celsius, though fluctuates somewhat with solar cycles. We need to set a baseline for how much damage relative heat energy deals. The spell create bonfire deals 1d8 damage per round. The average bonfire is approximately 900 Celsius, though obviously this varies a ton based on what type of wood. If we assume that the bonfire spell has a similar temperature (we have to make some assumptions to convert dnd stats to real life ones), we have that each 900 C equals 1d8 damage. Now by the thermal energy equation Q=mcΔt, basically stating that increasing the temperature by a factor of n increases the energy by a factor of n. So if we have that the sun is a factor or 166667 (15 million over 900) times hotter, the energy* will be 166667 times larger, giving us 166667 times the damage. So from the heat alone, we have about 166667d8 per round of fire damage.
However, the are more factors to consider. The sun's massive gravitational pull create immense pressure in the core. The pressure inside the sun is an absolutely insane 26.5 petapacals or 2.65*10^16 pascals. We again need to find a data point from dnd to give us a picture of how much damage a pascal of pressure is. A crocodile's bite deals 1d10+2 damage and has a pressure of about 25511000 pascals. So we can divide our pressure by 425511000 and then multiply by 1d10+2 for damage. Doing this calculation be get about 1038767590, for 1038767590d10+2077535180. Now a crocodile's teeth are sharp, but I feel justified letting this be our damage because the spear and quarterstaff deal the damage damage, when they are very similar weapons except for the fact that the spear point is sharp.
So adding these we'll get about 166667d8 of fire damage, plus 1038767590d10+2077535180 of bludgeoning damage. Now this feels off, that the sun somehow deals more bludgeoning damage than fire. But, on the other hand, this is directly from the dnd stats which means that dnd characters are just weirdly heat resistant. I mean, if they can heal from 1 hp to full hp overnight and survive being stabbed repeatedly in the chest but not someone screaming, then I guess it's not too weird....
*Thermal energy is also relative to mass meaning that the sun would actually have millions of times more thermal energy. However, you would not be exposed to the energy, so it's fair to just take into account the energy from the part of the sun nearby you. Plus, in dnd, being meteor swarmed by two meteors at once doesn't deal more damage so....
Now, the warlock that I want to do this will have a boon of invincibility and could be doing this in the Astral plane. If he negates the initial damage, will there be any fallout that he will die to later? The portal will be instantly closing once the artifact flies through instantaneously.
Well, presumably they could negate all damage for the initial damage. However, if the sun works like other effects in the game, it would damage both upon entering for the first time and at the end of a creature's turn. So they would have to go in, grab it, and come out of the sun all within a single turn. It's possible, though seems extremely hard.
The artifact is being pulled through the portal by the spell effect (since the named creature is inside of it) when the portals appear and will close when he drops concentration. I was wondering if any residual damaging effects would remain in the Astral Plane after the portal closes (after the initial damage).
The artifact is being pulled through the portal by the spell effect (since the named creature is inside of it) when the portals appear and will close when he drops concentration. I was wondering if any residual damaging effects would remain in the Astral Plane after the portal closes (after the initial damage).
Once the solar material is pulled through the portal, it will explode violently. This is because the solar material is under such pressure when in the sun but is immediately removed from it. So you can negate the damage of the explosion, and then the gas would disperse and rise because hydrogen is so much lighter than air. The only question would be how fast. Given how much hydrogen would be pulled out of the portal, it would likely take a few rounds to rise and/or disperse. And, during that time it'll heat up the air.
So I would rule at least that there would be effects for a while at least. Plus, as ThorukDuckSlaying pointed out, the damage to the world itself would be substantial.
But of course, this is assuming whatever world your in has earth like physics...
Since this would be occurring in the Astral Plane, I assumed that everything would be fine on the material plane. There would be no ground or direction for gravity in the astral plane. With the air heating up from the hydrogen rising, would this be enough to deal fire damage per round at the start of his turn or instead would a major area of the Astral Plane count as an Extreme Heat region? Also, would the hydrogen even rise in the Astral Plane where there is no gravity?
As for how it would affect the air temperature, I would guess it would be able to deal substantial damage for at least a minute or two, probably longer. It depends on how much hydrogen comes through the portal.
I know nothing about the astral plane, but I'm fairly sure it would not affect the material plane. Can the astral plane even be damaged?
I'll get back to you in a few days after I do research and calculations. For now all I have is guesses.
I really only need this warlock to survive two rounds in this heated air. After using a gate spell scroll and picking up the artifact, he can cast true polymorph to turn into an efreeti (which is immune to fire damage), and then can cast plane shift to get back to the Material Plane.
Well, there are a few other things to consider regarding the amount of damage this would do (honestly, I thought where I left it was enough!).
Aside from the sheer force of the eruption, the heat of it, and the seer quantity of gas coming out in the one second, we have to consider other things.
The front of this mass of gas which is being ejected by the portal to the middle of the sun will, by newtonian physics, move 1,838,621,608m. This is 1.8x10^9, or 18.3x10^8. There's a reason I've switched to x10^8.
The speed of light in a vacuum is 3.0x10^8 m/s. So the front of this cylinder of hydrogen-lava has enough energy behind it to be moving at 6 times the speed of light.
Assuming relativity is a thing in your world, and the speed of light remains the limit, then this energy needs to go somewhere. The pressure within the cylinder will increase, by a factor of just over 6, to prevent the hydrogen from exceeding this speed (the hydrogen will literally be slowed down the the resistance of time itself, which is a weird concept...).
Pressure and temperature are directly proportional, which is how heat pumps work. This means that if we sextuple the pressure, we sextuple the temperature. so 90 million degrees Celsius.
But it gets worse, again.
Did you know that the meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs was estimated to be as powerful as 10 billion hiroshima bombs? Well, this one-second lump of sun-lava would explode with somewhere in the region of 13,175,720,635,206 hiroshima bombs, which the quick-counters will spot is 13,175 billion hiroshima bombs.
Yep, this one-second of portal to get your artefact is going to unleash the equivalent over 1,300 extinction-event meteors onto a single spot.
How bad is that, really, asks the optimist?
The energy required to destroy the earth (overcome gravity and shatter it utterly) is approximately 2x10^32 Joules (2 with 32 "0"s after it). We have 2.4x10^27 Joules of energy from the fusion, and from newtonian physics alone we have 1x10^30 joules of kinetic energy from the jet of sun-juice.
So what we have is about 0.5% of the energy needed to destroy the eath. And that's without considering chain reactions or anything.
The hydrogen released will fuse into helium as it expands, and will melt the surface of the planet into glass as it blooms outwards into space like a solar flare. the entire atmosphere will be displaced as over a billion times its volume of unimaginably hot hydrogen expands outwards, dragging the rest of the atmosphere with it through Inducement, like a bladeless fan.
Fortunately, nobody will survive long enough to suffocate on the millions-degree-hot gas, because the radiation will be emitting from it with such intensity that the surface of the earth, and everyone on it, will be atomised.
Being on the opposite side of the earth is no protection, because the energy released would be the equivalent of a Richter Scale 18 earthquake (richter 20 will destroy the earth, just saying) That's not twice as bad as a scale 9 (the worst recorded), because it's logarithmic in base 10 - so each scale is ten times worse than the previous, so scale 18 is 1,000,000,000 times more powerful than a scale 9. Assuming the ocean isn't vapourised, the tsunami would probably be powerful enough to send the ocean into space when it met itself on the other side of the planet.
And let's not even consider the results if you'd aimed this portal downwards...
Honestly, I would consider this move a "well, you wiped out the plane entirely" kind of deal. I'd also consider the damage to be "plot damage", IE no resistance or immunity is going to save you!
Really I should be thanking the OP, as I made an animation for TikTok called "Dumb D&D Ideas", which I wanted to make a sequal for but couldn't for the life of me think of anything absurd enough to do. Now I think I've found it!
The fusion process is likely to stop almost immediately as the plasma expands through the portal. The only factor maintaining the hydrogen fusion process in the core is the huge pressure caused by the gravity compression at the core. So any additional power due to fusion processes is negligible. The power density at the core of the sun (based on wikipedia info :) ) is on the order of 276W/m3.
Keep in mind also that at the center of the sun the gravity is zero. Gravity for a sphere is determined by the mass of particles that are a closer to the center than the current position. At the center there are no particles closer so gravity is zero - so there should be limited or negligible gravitational effects through the portal. The density of the core of the sun is 150g/cm3 which is only about 10 times heavier than gold.
Relativity does not work the way described - particles are not "slowed down by time". From special relativity, the mass of an object increases as it gets closer to the speed of light and the time experienced by the object decreases. The increase in mass relative to the rest mass. The mass of the object as measured from the reference frame increases as the speed approaches the speed of light. The mass approaches infinity as the speed approaches c - which is why a material object can't be accelerated to the speed of light.
Opening a portal to the core of the sun would allow the plasma to expand as a free jet - any resistance at typical earth surface pressures would be negligible.
In the case of a plasma, there is no physical difference between temperature and kinetic energy - temperature is a measure of the random kinetic energy (translational) in a group of particles. (See kinetic theory of gases/plasmas).
One estimate for the rate of plasma expansion into a vacuum puts the velocity of the front at 3 *(kT/m)^1/2 ~ 10^6 m/s for T=15 million K and m = 1.67e-27 (proton mass). This is substantially less than the speed of light - however, in D&D terms, a million meters/second (1000km/sec) over a period of 12 seconds (2 rounds) would expand over a distance of 12,000km. However, because the portal is closer to a jet or nozzle, the expansion would not be uniform.
However, this does mean that your artifact embedded in this dense plasma material is likely to end up several thousand kilometers away from the portal (no matter where you open it) in the first few seconds (assuming it is accelerated by the dense plasma pressure at a rate comparable to the plasma expansion).
There is no way a creature could stand in front of the portal to try to grab the item since the damage from the expansion would be astronomical but the creature would also be "blown" several thousand kilometers with a very high rate of acceleration - so even with something to hold their body together - it would be pulped by the acceleration.
The bottom line is that a portal might release the item into whatever space where the portal is opened - but there is no way a creature will be able to quickly recover the item or even find it since they would need to search a massive volume of the astral plane covering several thousand or more kilometers - consider that even after the portal closes the item is still going to continue moving in a more or less random direction at a speed on the order of 1e6 m/s. You are effectively shooting the artifact out of a massive cannon onto the astral plane.
However, mixing magic and physic in D&D is rarely a good idea. :) ... so the DM needs to figure out what they want to have happen, figure out consequences, then figure out how they want it to work to give those results.
One thing to keep in mind ... if opening a portal to the core of the sun is so devastating ... why have mages not used this in wars? They could choose specific parts of the photosphere to give the level of damage they desire, open a portal, and wipe a city off the map. It would be the equivalent of a magical nuclear weapon. If you don't want your characters doing this then perhaps make the sun a huge anti-magic region which would prevent it from being abused (though it would mess with the plot line in this case in recovering an item at the center of the sun).
P.S. In terms of damage estimates - the fire + bludgeoning example above seemed as good as any.
So, if I have the caster have the portal facing toward him, the artifact would touch him and fuse with his body (by its own effect), and both he and the artifact would go flying off at a very high speed. And all damage that he would take in that instance would be negated by the Boon of Invulnerability. I could instead have the portal face away from him. He survives the blast with Boon of Invulnerability survives the heat with true polymorph, and teleports out with plane shift. The next day, he can use his spells (gate) to get the artifact back since he still knows the creature's name (the one inside the artifact).
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So, my players, through a bunch of shenanigans were able to drop an artifact (that has an ancient gold shadow dragon inside of it) into the sun. It is now at the center of the sun. What would happen if I used the gate spell in the astral plane to take the artifact out of the sun (saying the creature's name) before ending concentration immediately after the artifact appears? How long will the area be doing damage?
However many you want it to do, there's no reason to think that the sun in the D&D universe is like the sun in ours. I would treat it as a portal to the elemental plane of fire.
If you want to be genuinely realistic and true to our own sun, the sun's gravity would instantaneously rip the planet apart due to gravity. But you wouldn't be around to see it, as the heat would destroy you before the pain could register.
This will be a fun one!
The suns core is 15,000,000°C, or thereabouts. It's not going to be pleasant.
Assuming you go for the smallest diameter, you've got a 5 foot diameter disc which is opening onto liquid hydrogen at 15,000,000°C and 265,000,000,000 Bar.
We can assume that the magical portal is going to have no resistance to go through it, and even if it did, at these pressures it's going to be negligible.
In 1 second, you will have channeled 4,182,768,456 litres of sun into your immediate vicinity. This will form a cylindrical "laser" of immensely high pressure, high temperature hydrogen, which will be 6,032,223,125 feet long. That's 1,142,466.5 miles, or 1,838,621.6km long. If you opened this portal pointing in the right direction, you will have hit the moon after a third of a second.
But then it gets worse.
Every litre of sun you've poured out in this one, monumental lapse in judgement weighs 150kg (330lb). Imagine a 2-litre bottle which weighs as much as a large motorbike. Yeah, you've got billions of them. Assuming that the portal is pointing upwards (to try and vent into space), and that the portal is magically anchored to the planet, then you've just accelerated a mass of 627,415,268,343kg away from earth an average distance of 3,016,111,562 feet. The recoil of this (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) is 576789634843671000000N of force, which is like suddenly dropping 58,796,089,000,000,000,000kg onto the planet, which would probably crack it in half.
But then it gets worse.
Those astute scientific folk out there will have noticed that I'm treating this like it's a solid. It is in fact a liquid, composed of hydrogen at a pressure 265,000,000,000 times greater than the atmosphere at sea level. It's going to expand. In fact, this much hydrogen will form a bubble at a pressure of 1 bar of 265,000,000,000 times larger than in it's compressed state. This makes a bubble which is 3.13x10^22 cubic feet, which is 1% of the volume of the earth, released in 1 second.
But then it gets worse.
Remember when I said that the temperature was 15,000,000°C? I do!
At this pressure and temperature, and suddenly released, it's going to all undergo nuclear fusion. At once. Fusing one kilogram of hydrogen into helium releases 630 trillion joules of energy, so fusing just half of what we've got will release 2x10^26 joules of energy. Hiroshima was 1.32x10^13 joules, so you've released 13,175,720,635,206 Hiroshima Bombs somewhere within 60ft. of yourself.
Now, in D&D terms, we can take bludgeoning damage as a baseline. Falling 10ft. deals 1d6, for an average 100kg person (assuming armour) that's about 3000 Joules of energy. So if we divide this by the energy you're releasing, we get an approximation of 6,500,000,000,000,000,000,000d6 damage, for an average of 250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 damage, or half as much on a successful save.
Dex saves, please?
However, you can survive it - with magic!
Leomund's Tiny Hut states:
"The atmosphere inside the space is comfortable and dry, regardless of the weather outside."
So, in a strange contrast to most dangerous things - if you're going to do this, do it inside!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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Are you an astrophysicist or did you spend the time to look this all up and summarize it for everyone?
The second one!
I love physics and enjoy applying it to the ludicrous scenarios d&d sometimes brings up, so had a good idea that this would be pretty bad for the world in general. I'm also a fan of XKCD and their "what if?" section!
Also, it's worth noting that this scenario isn't the worst case - if you used a 20ft portal, you'd have 16 times the effect!
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That summary is an excellent piece of research you have come up with; thanks for sharing.
Now, the warlock that I want to do this will have a boon of invincibility and could be doing this in the Astral plane. If he negates the initial damage, will there be any fallout that he will die to later? The portal will be instantly closing once the artifact flies through instantaneously.
Wow I'm so excited this thread exists. I've been trying calculate this for months now, so way as well share my estimate.
The first way would be looking at the temperature. The core of the sun is approximately 15 million Celsius, though fluctuates somewhat with solar cycles. We need to set a baseline for how much damage relative heat energy deals. The spell create bonfire deals 1d8 damage per round. The average bonfire is approximately 900 Celsius, though obviously this varies a ton based on what type of wood. If we assume that the bonfire spell has a similar temperature (we have to make some assumptions to convert dnd stats to real life ones), we have that each 900 C equals 1d8 damage. Now by the thermal energy equation Q=mcΔt, basically stating that increasing the temperature by a factor of n increases the energy by a factor of n. So if we have that the sun is a factor or 166667 (15 million over 900) times hotter, the energy* will be 166667 times larger, giving us 166667 times the damage. So from the heat alone, we have about 166667d8 per round of fire damage.
However, the are more factors to consider. The sun's massive gravitational pull create immense pressure in the core. The pressure inside the sun is an absolutely insane 26.5 petapacals or 2.65*10^16 pascals. We again need to find a data point from dnd to give us a picture of how much damage a pascal of pressure is. A crocodile's bite deals 1d10+2 damage and has a pressure of about 25511000 pascals. So we can divide our pressure by 425511000 and then multiply by 1d10+2 for damage. Doing this calculation be get about 1038767590, for 1038767590d10+2077535180. Now a crocodile's teeth are sharp, but I feel justified letting this be our damage because the spear and quarterstaff deal the damage damage, when they are very similar weapons except for the fact that the spear point is sharp.
So adding these we'll get about 166667d8 of fire damage, plus 1038767590d10+2077535180 of bludgeoning damage. Now this feels off, that the sun somehow deals more bludgeoning damage than fire. But, on the other hand, this is directly from the dnd stats which means that dnd characters are just weirdly heat resistant. I mean, if they can heal from 1 hp to full hp overnight and survive being stabbed repeatedly in the chest but not someone screaming, then I guess it's not too weird....
*Thermal energy is also relative to mass meaning that the sun would actually have millions of times more thermal energy. However, you would not be exposed to the energy, so it's fair to just take into account the energy from the part of the sun nearby you. Plus, in dnd, being meteor swarmed by two meteors at once doesn't deal more damage so....
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
Well, presumably they could negate all damage for the initial damage. However, if the sun works like other effects in the game, it would damage both upon entering for the first time and at the end of a creature's turn. So they would have to go in, grab it, and come out of the sun all within a single turn. It's possible, though seems extremely hard.
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
The artifact is being pulled through the portal by the spell effect (since the named creature is inside of it) when the portals appear and will close when he drops concentration. I was wondering if any residual damaging effects would remain in the Astral Plane after the portal closes (after the initial damage).
Once the solar material is pulled through the portal, it will explode violently. This is because the solar material is under such pressure when in the sun but is immediately removed from it. So you can negate the damage of the explosion, and then the gas would disperse and rise because hydrogen is so much lighter than air. The only question would be how fast. Given how much hydrogen would be pulled out of the portal, it would likely take a few rounds to rise and/or disperse. And, during that time it'll heat up the air.
So I would rule at least that there would be effects for a while at least. Plus, as ThorukDuckSlaying pointed out, the damage to the world itself would be substantial.
But of course, this is assuming whatever world your in has earth like physics...
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
Since this would be occurring in the Astral Plane, I assumed that everything would be fine on the material plane. There would be no ground or direction for gravity in the astral plane. With the air heating up from the hydrogen rising, would this be enough to deal fire damage per round at the start of his turn or instead would a major area of the Astral Plane count as an Extreme Heat region? Also, would the hydrogen even rise in the Astral Plane where there is no gravity?
No, it would not rise without gravity.
As for how it would affect the air temperature, I would guess it would be able to deal substantial damage for at least a minute or two, probably longer. It depends on how much hydrogen comes through the portal.
I know nothing about the astral plane, but I'm fairly sure it would not affect the material plane. Can the astral plane even be damaged?
I'll get back to you in a few days after I do research and calculations. For now all I have is guesses.
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
I really only need this warlock to survive two rounds in this heated air. After using a gate spell scroll and picking up the artifact, he can cast true polymorph to turn into an efreeti (which is immune to fire damage), and then can cast plane shift to get back to the Material Plane.
Well, there are a few other things to consider regarding the amount of damage this would do (honestly, I thought where I left it was enough!).
Aside from the sheer force of the eruption, the heat of it, and the seer quantity of gas coming out in the one second, we have to consider other things.
The front of this mass of gas which is being ejected by the portal to the middle of the sun will, by newtonian physics, move 1,838,621,608m. This is 1.8x10^9, or 18.3x10^8. There's a reason I've switched to x10^8.
The speed of light in a vacuum is 3.0x10^8 m/s. So the front of this cylinder of hydrogen-lava has enough energy behind it to be moving at 6 times the speed of light.
Assuming relativity is a thing in your world, and the speed of light remains the limit, then this energy needs to go somewhere. The pressure within the cylinder will increase, by a factor of just over 6, to prevent the hydrogen from exceeding this speed (the hydrogen will literally be slowed down the the resistance of time itself, which is a weird concept...).
Pressure and temperature are directly proportional, which is how heat pumps work. This means that if we sextuple the pressure, we sextuple the temperature. so 90 million degrees Celsius.
But it gets worse, again.
Did you know that the meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs was estimated to be as powerful as 10 billion hiroshima bombs? Well, this one-second lump of sun-lava would explode with somewhere in the region of 13,175,720,635,206 hiroshima bombs, which the quick-counters will spot is 13,175 billion hiroshima bombs.
Yep, this one-second of portal to get your artefact is going to unleash the equivalent over 1,300 extinction-event meteors onto a single spot.
How bad is that, really, asks the optimist?
The energy required to destroy the earth (overcome gravity and shatter it utterly) is approximately 2x10^32 Joules (2 with 32 "0"s after it). We have 2.4x10^27 Joules of energy from the fusion, and from newtonian physics alone we have 1x10^30 joules of kinetic energy from the jet of sun-juice.
So what we have is about 0.5% of the energy needed to destroy the eath. And that's without considering chain reactions or anything.
The hydrogen released will fuse into helium as it expands, and will melt the surface of the planet into glass as it blooms outwards into space like a solar flare. the entire atmosphere will be displaced as over a billion times its volume of unimaginably hot hydrogen expands outwards, dragging the rest of the atmosphere with it through Inducement, like a bladeless fan.
Fortunately, nobody will survive long enough to suffocate on the millions-degree-hot gas, because the radiation will be emitting from it with such intensity that the surface of the earth, and everyone on it, will be atomised.
Being on the opposite side of the earth is no protection, because the energy released would be the equivalent of a Richter Scale 18 earthquake (richter 20 will destroy the earth, just saying) That's not twice as bad as a scale 9 (the worst recorded), because it's logarithmic in base 10 - so each scale is ten times worse than the previous, so scale 18 is 1,000,000,000 times more powerful than a scale 9. Assuming the ocean isn't vapourised, the tsunami would probably be powerful enough to send the ocean into space when it met itself on the other side of the planet.
And let's not even consider the results if you'd aimed this portal downwards...
Honestly, I would consider this move a "well, you wiped out the plane entirely" kind of deal. I'd also consider the damage to be "plot damage", IE no resistance or immunity is going to save you!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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Bravo, ThorukDuckSlayer.
Really I should be thanking the OP, as I made an animation for TikTok called "Dumb D&D Ideas", which I wanted to make a sequal for but couldn't for the life of me think of anything absurd enough to do. Now I think I've found it!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
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I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
A couple of quick comments ..
The fusion process is likely to stop almost immediately as the plasma expands through the portal. The only factor maintaining the hydrogen fusion process in the core is the huge pressure caused by the gravity compression at the core. So any additional power due to fusion processes is negligible. The power density at the core of the sun (based on wikipedia info :) ) is on the order of 276W/m3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_core
Keep in mind also that at the center of the sun the gravity is zero. Gravity for a sphere is determined by the mass of particles that are a closer to the center than the current position. At the center there are no particles closer so gravity is zero - so there should be limited or negligible gravitational effects through the portal. The density of the core of the sun is 150g/cm3 which is only about 10 times heavier than gold.
https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/interior.shtml
Relativity does not work the way described - particles are not "slowed down by time". From special relativity, the mass of an object increases as it gets closer to the speed of light and the time experienced by the object decreases. The increase in mass relative to the rest mass. The mass of the object as measured from the reference frame increases as the speed approaches the speed of light. The mass approaches infinity as the speed approaches c - which is why a material object can't be accelerated to the speed of light.
Opening a portal to the core of the sun would allow the plasma to expand as a free jet - any resistance at typical earth surface pressures would be negligible.
In the case of a plasma, there is no physical difference between temperature and kinetic energy - temperature is a measure of the random kinetic energy (translational) in a group of particles. (See kinetic theory of gases/plasmas).
One estimate for the rate of plasma expansion into a vacuum puts the velocity of the front at 3 *(kT/m)^1/2 ~ 10^6 m/s for T=15 million K and m = 1.67e-27 (proton mass). This is substantially less than the speed of light - however, in D&D terms, a million meters/second (1000km/sec) over a period of 12 seconds (2 rounds) would expand over a distance of 12,000km. However, because the portal is closer to a jet or nozzle, the expansion would not be uniform.
However, this does mean that your artifact embedded in this dense plasma material is likely to end up several thousand kilometers away from the portal (no matter where you open it) in the first few seconds (assuming it is accelerated by the dense plasma pressure at a rate comparable to the plasma expansion).
There is no way a creature could stand in front of the portal to try to grab the item since the damage from the expansion would be astronomical but the creature would also be "blown" several thousand kilometers with a very high rate of acceleration - so even with something to hold their body together - it would be pulped by the acceleration.
The bottom line is that a portal might release the item into whatever space where the portal is opened - but there is no way a creature will be able to quickly recover the item or even find it since they would need to search a massive volume of the astral plane covering several thousand or more kilometers - consider that even after the portal closes the item is still going to continue moving in a more or less random direction at a speed on the order of 1e6 m/s. You are effectively shooting the artifact out of a massive cannon onto the astral plane.
However, mixing magic and physic in D&D is rarely a good idea. :) ... so the DM needs to figure out what they want to have happen, figure out consequences, then figure out how they want it to work to give those results.
One thing to keep in mind ... if opening a portal to the core of the sun is so devastating ... why have mages not used this in wars? They could choose specific parts of the photosphere to give the level of damage they desire, open a portal, and wipe a city off the map. It would be the equivalent of a magical nuclear weapon. If you don't want your characters doing this then perhaps make the sun a huge anti-magic region which would prevent it from being abused (though it would mess with the plot line in this case in recovering an item at the center of the sun).
P.S. In terms of damage estimates - the fire + bludgeoning example above seemed as good as any.
So, if I have the caster have the portal facing toward him, the artifact would touch him and fuse with his body (by its own effect), and both he and the artifact would go flying off at a very high speed. And all damage that he would take in that instance would be negated by the Boon of Invulnerability. I could instead have the portal face away from him. He survives the blast with Boon of Invulnerability survives the heat with true polymorph, and teleports out with plane shift. The next day, he can use his spells (gate) to get the artifact back since he still knows the creature's name (the one inside the artifact).