Okay, so I don't know much about this forum so forgive me if this isn't where I'm supposed to do this, but I have a question.
So I'm DMing for a party with a homebrewed science fiction theme, the party of 4 level 11's were fighting this massive fleshy monstrosity (who I made a CR16). The Fighter, Barbarian, and Paladin were trying to fight it (more like run from it) on the ground, but my druid was in the parties spaceship in orbit. She decided to cast wall of stone twice and make two massive stone cones, which I calculated to weigh 42 tons each. She used her proficiency in blacksmithing (what we're using to deal with machinery and stuff) (I know, I thought it was weird too that a druid was proficient in blacksmithing) to connect control fins to the cones and basic guidance computers. Then it was 5pm, and they had to go home (saved by the bell), but I know what she was going to do, but I don't know how much damage it'd do, and that's why I'm here.
So how much damage would a 40 ton cone of stone falling at 10 kilometers per second do? Would it be bludgeoning? Piercing because the cone is sharp tipped? Both? Would reentry heat it up enough to do fire damage? I don't know. But I do know that I want it to succeed (and not just burn up in the atmosphere), because it's honestly just plain awesome, and a good excuse to throw much harder enemies at them in the future.
I would say make it bludgeoning damage with a DEX save for half damage (with an automatic failure for those who are nearby). For simplicity, you could perhaps use the modified version of Fall Damage from Xanathars (I think). Now, of course, none of the fall damage rules really account for weight differences, so you could either add more damage dice or increase the base dice value from a d6 to a d8 if you wanted to add more oomf.
Also, depending on the size of the cones and how close the party is, even a direct hit on the monster may make it difficult for the party to escape the radius. If the druid doesnt communicate with the players, then they could also suffer an automatic failure.
Another thing to consider, since you bring up burning up on reentry, is how much material is lost by this process before it reaches the target? Would that decrease the overall damage? If you go with this version I would recommend adding a few dice worth of fire damage for flare.
Anyway, thats my two cents on it. Like I said, I think the easiest way to calculate damage would be the modified version of Fall Damage. From there you can always make a small adjustment or two if the damage seems too great or too little.
Overall I think this is a very creative idea by your druid and should definitely be rewarded. But also be sure to show them the danger of using that strategy if they dont consider the party position (as they may want to use the same strategy in the future).
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Basing this on the Wikipedia article for Kinetic Bombardment ...
Saving throws aren't going to help. This thing is going to literally hit with the force of a nuke, and I know what the word 'literally' means. No radiation, no fallout, but the kinetic force is going to obliterate anything and everything nearby.
Thanks, I looked at fall damage and I don't think the standard max of 20d6 is enough.
So I tried getting rid of the standard and based it off of height fell of 1d6 every 10 feet, and I think 500,000d6 is a little overkill.
Then I tried doing the math based on kinetic energy alone compared to a javelin (doing 1d6 damage with a speed of 30 mph and weight of 2 lb), but I think 15,000,000d6 is even more overkill. And that'd kill basically anything other than monsters with immunity to non-magical attacks.
But thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I'll probably end up tailoring encounters to make them more like a resource management problem, where it is basically a one hit kill, but given the druid can only make two of them every 8 hours, have a lot of monsters spread out so she'll run out of cones. Or maybe exploit her neutral good alignment by putting the monster in a city, where that strategy would kill hundreds of civilians. But her player is pretty smart (and was the dm of our last campaign), so I have no doubt she'll come up with solutions to those as well.
My instinct would be to simply treat it as a quarter of a Meteor Swarm so a single meteor doing 20d6 bludgeoning and 20d6 fire, dex save for half.
This. Don't sweat the details too much. If the players really want to argue, tell them that the atmosphere is magical and that your world has lower gravity.
My instinct would be to simply treat it as a quarter of a Meteor Swarm so a single meteor doing 20d6 bludgeoning and 20d6 fire, dex save for half.
This. Don't sweat the details too much. If the players really want to argue, tell them that the atmosphere is magical and that your world has lower gravity.
But I'm the kind of person who doesn't like how dnd often severely weakens things to make them non-instant kill to PC's. Like how the Tarasque (who can literally eat entire cities with ease) only does on average 36 damage with its bite. In most canons it can chew through an entire stone tower in one bite, so it should easily be able to kill any normal race with ease in one bite.
Of course I'm not gonna do that for everything, that would take way too long and be way too hard to keep track of, I'd basically need to make my own monster manual to do that.
But for this, it doesn't have anything in any handbook, and I want it to be something special, devastating to entire city blocks, that my players need to use carefully or risk killing hundreds or thousands unnecessarily. And having it only do 40d6 (even though that alone is rather overpowered in the regular game) doesn't serve it justice.
I am aware of that, but my point still stands, the amount of damage massive things do is toned down to stop even 20th level PC's from instantly dying.
Usually that's okay, but in this case, I want it to have more devastating consequences, not just an average of 140 damage. That's not even enough to kill my Barbarian with a direct hit, or even knock him out if he's raging.
At this point, with how I want the orbital strike to behave, I don't think I have to come up with a hard and fast damage amount, just a one hit kill and a d20 roll for overall extent of collateral damage. I'll be introducing much larger enemies that'll survive several hits further along in the campaign, and at that point I'll come up with an actual amount of damage it does. But either way, it'll be orders of magnitude more damaging than the PC's could do themselves without the aid of heavy equipment.
It's sci-fi. Why don't the characters just activate their shield spell, er I mean Weyland Yutani personal force barrier that lowers the orbital bombardment damage to the level represented by meteor swarm?
If you look at real world examples like the Chelyabinsk Meteor you see that it would explode in the air over the party and cause a huge explosion that kills everything for miles around. You don't need dice, the monster is dead and everyone but the druid is rolling a new character. Depending on the location you may have hundreds or thousands of dead civilians as well.
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Okay, so I don't know much about this forum so forgive me if this isn't where I'm supposed to do this, but I have a question.
So I'm DMing for a party with a homebrewed science fiction theme, the party of 4 level 11's were fighting this massive fleshy monstrosity (who I made a CR16). The Fighter, Barbarian, and Paladin were trying to fight it (more like run from it) on the ground, but my druid was in the parties spaceship in orbit. She decided to cast wall of stone twice and make two massive stone cones, which I calculated to weigh 42 tons each. She used her proficiency in blacksmithing (what we're using to deal with machinery and stuff) (I know, I thought it was weird too that a druid was proficient in blacksmithing) to connect control fins to the cones and basic guidance computers. Then it was 5pm, and they had to go home (saved by the bell), but I know what she was going to do, but I don't know how much damage it'd do, and that's why I'm here.
So how much damage would a 40 ton cone of stone falling at 10 kilometers per second do? Would it be bludgeoning? Piercing because the cone is sharp tipped? Both? Would reentry heat it up enough to do fire damage? I don't know. But I do know that I want it to succeed (and not just burn up in the atmosphere), because it's honestly just plain awesome, and a good excuse to throw much harder enemies at them in the future.
I would say make it bludgeoning damage with a DEX save for half damage (with an automatic failure for those who are nearby). For simplicity, you could perhaps use the modified version of Fall Damage from Xanathars (I think). Now, of course, none of the fall damage rules really account for weight differences, so you could either add more damage dice or increase the base dice value from a d6 to a d8 if you wanted to add more oomf.
Also, depending on the size of the cones and how close the party is, even a direct hit on the monster may make it difficult for the party to escape the radius. If the druid doesnt communicate with the players, then they could also suffer an automatic failure.
Another thing to consider, since you bring up burning up on reentry, is how much material is lost by this process before it reaches the target? Would that decrease the overall damage? If you go with this version I would recommend adding a few dice worth of fire damage for flare.
Anyway, thats my two cents on it. Like I said, I think the easiest way to calculate damage would be the modified version of Fall Damage. From there you can always make a small adjustment or two if the damage seems too great or too little.
Overall I think this is a very creative idea by your druid and should definitely be rewarded. But also be sure to show them the danger of using that strategy if they dont consider the party position (as they may want to use the same strategy in the future).
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Basing this on the Wikipedia article for Kinetic Bombardment ...
Saving throws aren't going to help. This thing is going to literally hit with the force of a nuke, and I know what the word 'literally' means. No radiation, no fallout, but the kinetic force is going to obliterate anything and everything nearby.
Thanks, I looked at fall damage and I don't think the standard max of 20d6 is enough.
So I tried getting rid of the standard and based it off of height fell of 1d6 every 10 feet, and I think 500,000d6 is a little overkill.
Then I tried doing the math based on kinetic energy alone compared to a javelin (doing 1d6 damage with a speed of 30 mph and weight of 2 lb), but I think 15,000,000d6 is even more overkill. And that'd kill basically anything other than monsters with immunity to non-magical attacks.
But thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I'll probably end up tailoring encounters to make them more like a resource management problem, where it is basically a one hit kill, but given the druid can only make two of them every 8 hours, have a lot of monsters spread out so she'll run out of cones. Or maybe exploit her neutral good alignment by putting the monster in a city, where that strategy would kill hundreds of civilians. But her player is pretty smart (and was the dm of our last campaign), so I have no doubt she'll come up with solutions to those as well.
My instinct would be to simply treat it as a quarter of a Meteor Swarm so a single meteor doing 20d6 bludgeoning and 20d6 fire, dex save for half.
This. Don't sweat the details too much. If the players really want to argue, tell them that the atmosphere is magical and that your world has lower gravity.
But I'm the kind of person who doesn't like how dnd often severely weakens things to make them non-instant kill to PC's. Like how the Tarasque (who can literally eat entire cities with ease) only does on average 36 damage with its bite. In most canons it can chew through an entire stone tower in one bite, so it should easily be able to kill any normal race with ease in one bite.
Of course I'm not gonna do that for everything, that would take way too long and be way too hard to keep track of, I'd basically need to make my own monster manual to do that.
But for this, it doesn't have anything in any handbook, and I want it to be something special, devastating to entire city blocks, that my players need to use carefully or risk killing hundreds or thousands unnecessarily. And having it only do 40d6 (even though that alone is rather overpowered in the regular game) doesn't serve it justice.
Keep in mind that hp also represents a character's ability to avoid getting chomped by the Tarasque and to some extent, how much plot armor they have.
I am aware of that, but my point still stands, the amount of damage massive things do is toned down to stop even 20th level PC's from instantly dying.
Usually that's okay, but in this case, I want it to have more devastating consequences, not just an average of 140 damage. That's not even enough to kill my Barbarian with a direct hit, or even knock him out if he's raging.
At this point, with how I want the orbital strike to behave, I don't think I have to come up with a hard and fast damage amount, just a one hit kill and a d20 roll for overall extent of collateral damage. I'll be introducing much larger enemies that'll survive several hits further along in the campaign, and at that point I'll come up with an actual amount of damage it does. But either way, it'll be orders of magnitude more damaging than the PC's could do themselves without the aid of heavy equipment.
It's sci-fi. Why don't the characters just activate their shield spell, er I mean Weyland Yutani personal force barrier that lowers the orbital bombardment damage to the level represented by meteor swarm?
"Not all those who wander are lost"
If you look at real world examples like the Chelyabinsk Meteor you see that it would explode in the air over the party and cause a huge explosion that kills everything for miles around. You don't need dice, the monster is dead and everyone but the druid is rolling a new character. Depending on the location you may have hundreds or thousands of dead civilians as well.