The wizard blinks and suddenly finds themself transported to a post-apocalyptic landscape several millennia in the future. Society has collapsed, humanity is nearly extinct, and nature is retaking the world. The wizard stands in what used to be a Waffle House parking lot. Inside the crumbling yellow building, the last surviving human being on the planet turns off the last light bulb that will ever illuminate this world. The Sole Survivor sits in a booth in the darkness and with a wry smile mutters to himself, "Closing time", and then lays his head in his arms to peacefully drift off into a well-earned final rest.
Or instantly, all Waffle Houses become Waffle Huts. Bam. Victory?!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Some confusion exists about the sudden emergence of International Hut of Pancakes, and Pizza House. It seems a certainly level of rippling is to be expected when changing reality on a major level. The White Hut has refused to comment.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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 wizard blinks and suddenly finds themself transported to a post-apocalyptic landscape several millennia in the future. Society has collapsed, humanity is nearly extinct, and nature is retaking the world. The wizard stands in what used to be a Waffle House parking lot. Inside the crumbling yellow building, the last surviving human being on the planet turns off the last light bulb that will ever illuminate this world. The Sole Survivor sits in a booth in the darkness and with a wry smile mutters to himself, "Closing time", and then lays his head in his arms to peacefully drift off into a well-earned final rest.
That's because Wish's healing effect is an explicitly described ability of the spell. Wishing to destroy huge amounts of matter is not. The spell's description states that simply attempting to Wish someone dead can potentially backfire on the caster in a way that functionally removes them from the game. Destroying all plastic or tank armor or the like in the world is well beyond that in terms of attempting to rewrite reality and as such is guaranteed to backfire, so at best you'd be able to get the upcast Disintegrate.
Really? Another example: dealing damage to somebody is not the same as using inflict wounds, despite the name.
Also, your final point is just a claim. Maybe a DM wouldn't allow that. If so, the other 998 wizards would do smaller wishes. ("I wish for all [material] within 100 miles to be ruined")
Wizards are supposed to be smart. Let's say the wizards exercise their intelligence by using disguise self or similar effects and doing some minimal research. They would conclude that money exerts influence. Wish has an effect which creates 25,000 gp of value ex nihilo. The wizards, being as smart as they are, crash the world's markets, buy up the world's arms manufacturers, and start their own imperialist project.
Wizards are supposed to be smart. Let's say the wizards exercise their intelligence by using disguise self or similar effects and doing the barest minimum of research. They would conclude that money exerts influence. Wish has an effect which creates 25,000 gp of value ex nihilo. The wizards, being as smart as they are, crash the world's markets, buy up the world's arms manufacturers, and start their own imperialist project.
You'll find, I think, that creating even a measly billion dollars worth of ... anything, but let's just say they use their gold value to create gold, requires an inordinate amount of wishes. 400, to be exact. For a billion dollars, and billions are like a dime a dozen. So, for a trillion, well that's 400.000 wishes.
The entire global gold market has a value of around 22,5 trillion.
So. With 400.000 wishes, you get enough gold to reduce the total value of all the gold in the world by ~5%. So it takes 1000 mages 400 days to produce this much gold. Over a year of work. Not that they're not getting value for their time, but it doesn't crash the market. And even if it did, so what? We're not dependent on gold. If loses value, we move our investments into stocks and bonds and so on.
What have you really achieved?
I dunno. Wizards can create wealth if they so chose, but I'm not sure that helps them. They can't go out and just ... purchase a world class military. They don't sell fighter jets to random people without proper identification.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Really? Another example: dealing damage to somebody is not the same as using inflict wounds, despite the name.
Also, your final point is just a claim. Maybe a DM wouldn't allow that. If so, the other 998 wizards would do smaller wishes. ("I wish for all [material] within 100 miles to be ruined")
Now all the metal around the area has mild rust around them, oh no, the travesty, not like multiple metals are immune to being tarnished, like gold, platinum, palladium and stainless steel. Also what is the thought process behind this? Why not target large chunks of agricultural land, which would actually screw things up, instead of forcing everyone to get a shot for tetanus.
I have no idea why you would ever target the economy instead of everything that holds said economy up, why not cast fire storm on a massive field of wheat or whatever, cause forest fires beyond comprehension, not be the newest creator of magic missile coin or whatever.
I wouldn't claim to be a world class economist, though I might argue that a 20 int wizard could be... And while I wouldn't want to start an argument, I do find something about this thought experiment compelling (maybe as the premise for a weird Ars Magicka game?), so I'll try to add a fuller articulation of how I see the potential for wizards to succeed through planning and manipulation (some of it financial). First, I submit that intelligence consists in part of having the patience to prepare the effect you want before acting. That's why you can call chess a mental game even though it consists of fiddling black and white piece of plastic in ways which are inconsequential off the board. Say it takes 20 years for the wizards to amass the resources they need to put their plan into action--they take the time, if they're smart.
As I see it, the scope for manipulation is significantly larger than the events of a single day of trading.With dream (and significantly more of our wizards can cast that than wish) you can get someone into an irrational, sleep deprived state. With modify memory, you can have someone remember false information. And the wizards needn't only target financiers. They can go after the UN and heads of state--who could easily recall that their lifelong ally (as of ten minutes ago) needs help fighting an ancestral enemy for the betterment of human flourishing and the bank account of the politician in question. Also, geas the world's generals. Obviously in the course of twenty years of preparation, the other side has scope to react, so I see the problem as one of guessing which group's countermeasures work best against the other's abilities. For example, does a massive dose of over the counter melatonin prevent dream from having an effect? That's the sort of question you answer with a GM, but my intuition is there are more spells which can't be countered with CCTV than there are bullets which can't be countered with invisibility...
I wouldn't claim to be a world class economist, though I might argue that a 20 int wizard could be... And while I wouldn't want to start an argument, I do find something about this thought experiment compelling (maybe as the premise for a weird Ars Magicka game?), so I'll try to add a fuller articulation of how I see the potential for wizards to succeed through planning and manipulation (some of it financial). First, I submit that intelligence consists in part of having the patience to prepare the effect you want before acting. That's why you can call chess a mental game even though it consists of fiddling black and white piece of plastic in ways which are inconsequential off the board. Say it takes 20 years for the wizards to amass the resources they need to put their plan into action--they take the time, if they're smart.
As I see it, the scope for manipulation is significantly larger than the events of a single day of trading.With dream (and significantly more of our wizards can cast that than wish) you can get someone into an irrational, sleep deprived state. With modify memory, you can have someone remember false information. And the wizards needn't only target financiers. They can go after the UN and heads of state--who could easily recall that their lifelong ally (as of ten minutes ago) needs help fighting an ancestral enemy for the betterment of human flourishing and the bank account of the politician in question. Also, geas the world's generals. Obviously in the course of twenty years of preparation, the other side has scope to react, so I see the problem as one of guessing which group's countermeasures work best against the other's abilities. For example, does a massive dose of over the counter melatonin prevent dream from having an effect? That's the sort of question you answer with a GM, but my intuition is there are more spells which can't be countered with CCTV than there are bullets which can't be countered with invisibility...
Yes, but you're expecting this go do undetected, and uncountered. You expect wizards to keep diligently working in the shadows for 20 years, without getting bored, going home, switching sides, bragging about things in a drunken stupor one night out on the town. You're expecting these wizards to somehow build from nothing - they lack money, ID's, any sort of network, education in anything relevant in the modern world (such as economics).
And there's a million of them. Some can create wealth out of nothing, but it will take the shape of highly suspect things. You create a pile of gold or diamonds for starting capital - that's going to get noticed. Those markets are monitored, and everyone knows everyone. You can't just walk in with a ton of gold and say 'oh, hi, I'd like to sell all this gold that I just found and/or inherited.' The world doesn't work like that.
A 'secret organisation' of a million wizards will be discovered, and dealt with. Somehow. To my mind, they'll be seen as a ressource, and recruited. If they're reasonable about it. Or, if not, it'll become a sort of covert hot war that no one can really win. Maybe. If a few dozen wizards are recruited by the tech side, and help defeat the rest of the wizards - does that mean wizards win?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
I have no idea why you would ever target the economy instead of everything that holds said economy up, why not cast fire storm on a massive field of wheat or whatever, cause forest fires beyond comprehension, not be the newest create of magic missile coin or whatever.
You only need Control Flames for someting like that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"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?"
Could always Suggest that the government is spending too much on military hardware.
I don’t think that would do anything, like, all you did was make them go “damn that’s a lot of money for nukes”, that doesn’t mean they start ordering people to stop making weapons, especially if everyone else has 5 brain cells and isn’t dumb enough to follow in something that would clearly cripple their ability to defend themselves.
True, instead of military reduction, they could Suggest increasing or creating tension with neighboring countries and imposing needless penalties on allies.
Suggest invading a neighboring country because they should worship God the way you do.
True, instead of military reduction, they could Suggest increasing or creating tension with neighboring countries and imposing needless penalties on allies.
Suggest invading a neighboring country because they should worship God the way you do.
Wars don't have to be won in a day.
Suggestion won’t be able to last long enough, not to mention that you would need more than a dozen spellcasters to do such a thing for possibly weeks on end. Also people are a lot less religious than in medieval times, so doing that would probably get them really confused.
Also politicians don’t actually have the ability to declare war, they got entire cabinets, PR teams and advisors by their side to make sure they don’t do anything too stupid, so if they believe that the politicians aren’t right in the head, they could just declare that they aren’t allowed to make any decisions about anything important for some time.
Let's not get distracted by arguing what government systems do or do not allow.
Really, if a bunch of magic users wanted to disrupt/destroy the real world, the easiest way would be by creating some sort of magical plant disease. Something that's easily spread, targets corn, potatoes, rice, and wheat, and can't be cured without magic would be enough to wipe out most of humanity.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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Exactly!
Wizard: "I Wish for all Waffle Houses to close."
The wizard blinks and suddenly finds themself transported to a post-apocalyptic landscape several millennia in the future. Society has collapsed, humanity is nearly extinct, and nature is retaking the world. The wizard stands in what used to be a Waffle House parking lot. Inside the crumbling yellow building, the last surviving human being on the planet turns off the last light bulb that will ever illuminate this world. The Sole Survivor sits in a booth in the darkness and with a wry smile mutters to himself, "Closing time", and then lays his head in his arms to peacefully drift off into a well-earned final rest.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
Or instantly, all Waffle Houses become Waffle Huts. Bam. Victory?!
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.
"Or instantly, all Waffle Houses become Waffle Huts. Bam. Victory?!"
Perfidy! Sacrilege! Balderdash!
What vituperative technicality is this?
How dare you, good sir? How Very Dare You?!
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
Some confusion exists about the sudden emergence of International Hut of Pancakes, and Pizza House. It seems a certainly level of rippling is to be expected when changing reality on a major level. The White Hut has refused to comment.
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.
McWhopper?
WTF IS A MCWHOPPER????
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
I think that's still technically a win.
Really? Another example: dealing damage to somebody is not the same as using inflict wounds, despite the name.
Also, your final point is just a claim. Maybe a DM wouldn't allow that. If so, the other 998 wizards would do smaller wishes. ("I wish for all [material] within 100 miles to be ruined")
Wizards are supposed to be smart. Let's say the wizards exercise their intelligence by using disguise self or similar effects and doing some minimal research. They would conclude that money exerts influence. Wish has an effect which creates 25,000 gp of value ex nihilo. The wizards, being as smart as they are, crash the world's markets, buy up the world's arms manufacturers, and start their own imperialist project.
You'll find, I think, that creating even a measly billion dollars worth of ... anything, but let's just say they use their gold value to create gold, requires an inordinate amount of wishes. 400, to be exact. For a billion dollars, and billions are like a dime a dozen. So, for a trillion, well that's 400.000 wishes.
The entire global gold market has a value of around 22,5 trillion.
So. With 400.000 wishes, you get enough gold to reduce the total value of all the gold in the world by ~5%. So it takes 1000 mages 400 days to produce this much gold. Over a year of work. Not that they're not getting value for their time, but it doesn't crash the market. And even if it did, so what? We're not dependent on gold. If loses value, we move our investments into stocks and bonds and so on.
What have you really achieved?
I dunno. Wizards can create wealth if they so chose, but I'm not sure that helps them. They can't go out and just ... purchase a world class military. They don't sell fighter jets to random people without proper identification.
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.
And then lose all their money investing in NFTs, because wizards typically have high intelligence but not high wisdom.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
.
Now all the metal around the area has mild rust around them, oh no, the travesty, not like multiple metals are immune to being tarnished, like gold, platinum, palladium and stainless steel. Also what is the thought process behind this? Why not target large chunks of agricultural land, which would actually screw things up, instead of forcing everyone to get a shot for tetanus.
I have no idea why you would ever target the economy instead of everything that holds said economy up, why not cast fire storm on a massive field of wheat or whatever, cause forest fires beyond comprehension, not be the newest creator of magic missile coin or whatever.
I wouldn't claim to be a world class economist, though I might argue that a 20 int wizard could be... And while I wouldn't want to start an argument, I do find something about this thought experiment compelling (maybe as the premise for a weird Ars Magicka game?), so I'll try to add a fuller articulation of how I see the potential for wizards to succeed through planning and manipulation (some of it financial). First, I submit that intelligence consists in part of having the patience to prepare the effect you want before acting. That's why you can call chess a mental game even though it consists of fiddling black and white piece of plastic in ways which are inconsequential off the board. Say it takes 20 years for the wizards to amass the resources they need to put their plan into action--they take the time, if they're smart.
As I see it, the scope for manipulation is significantly larger than the events of a single day of trading. With dream (and significantly more of our wizards can cast that than wish) you can get someone into an irrational, sleep deprived state. With modify memory, you can have someone remember false information. And the wizards needn't only target financiers. They can go after the UN and heads of state--who could easily recall that their lifelong ally (as of ten minutes ago) needs help fighting an ancestral enemy for the betterment of human flourishing and the bank account of the politician in question. Also, geas the world's generals. Obviously in the course of twenty years of preparation, the other side has scope to react, so I see the problem as one of guessing which group's countermeasures work best against the other's abilities. For example, does a massive dose of over the counter melatonin prevent dream from having an effect? That's the sort of question you answer with a GM, but my intuition is there are more spells which can't be countered with CCTV than there are bullets which can't be countered with invisibility...
Yes, but you're expecting this go do undetected, and uncountered. You expect wizards to keep diligently working in the shadows for 20 years, without getting bored, going home, switching sides, bragging about things in a drunken stupor one night out on the town. You're expecting these wizards to somehow build from nothing - they lack money, ID's, any sort of network, education in anything relevant in the modern world (such as economics).
And there's a million of them. Some can create wealth out of nothing, but it will take the shape of highly suspect things. You create a pile of gold or diamonds for starting capital - that's going to get noticed. Those markets are monitored, and everyone knows everyone. You can't just walk in with a ton of gold and say 'oh, hi, I'd like to sell all this gold that I just found and/or inherited.' The world doesn't work like that.
A 'secret organisation' of a million wizards will be discovered, and dealt with. Somehow. To my mind, they'll be seen as a ressource, and recruited. If they're reasonable about it. Or, if not, it'll become a sort of covert hot war that no one can really win. Maybe. If a few dozen wizards are recruited by the tech side, and help defeat the rest of the wizards - does that mean wizards win?
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.
You only need Control Flames for someting like that.
"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
Could always Suggest that the government is spending too much on military hardware.
"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
I don’t think that would do anything, like, all you did was make them go “damn that’s a lot of money for nukes”, that doesn’t mean they start ordering people to stop making weapons, especially if everyone else has 5 brain cells and isn’t dumb enough to follow in something that would clearly cripple their ability to defend themselves.
How many of the casters can cast a level 2 spell?
How many can get within 30 feet of a politician?
True, instead of military reduction, they could Suggest increasing or creating tension with neighboring countries and imposing needless penalties on allies.
Suggest invading a neighboring country because they should worship God the way you do.
Wars don't have to be won in a day.
"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
Suggestion won’t be able to last long enough, not to mention that you would need more than a dozen spellcasters to do such a thing for possibly weeks on end. Also people are a lot less religious than in medieval times, so doing that would probably get them really confused.
Also politicians don’t actually have the ability to declare war, they got entire cabinets, PR teams and advisors by their side to make sure they don’t do anything too stupid, so if they believe that the politicians aren’t right in the head, they could just declare that they aren’t allowed to make any decisions about anything important for some time.
Let's not get distracted by arguing what government systems do or do not allow.
Really, if a bunch of magic users wanted to disrupt/destroy the real world, the easiest way would be by creating some sort of magical plant disease. Something that's easily spread, targets corn, potatoes, rice, and wheat, and can't be cured without magic would be enough to wipe out most of humanity.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.