Buried alive - Need Help

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I think what he's suggesting - and it's a good suggestion - is cast Move Earth on a 2x2x1 yard block of stone near the surface. Move that stone up and out, thinning it as you go, so it becomes a wall and roof, each 6" thick, with a total surface area of 216 square feet. Now, at 1 yard per second, walk 60 yards while moving your 4 cubic yards of stone with you. Spend 3 FP to maintain it for another minute, and repeat the movement until you're free of the spiders.

Total cost to move 500 meters is 7 + 8 * 3 FP - which is a little more than your mage can get off, but you can have the Cleric cast Lend Energy on you to make up the deficit. It takes about 9 minutes to pull this trick and a single spellcasting roll.

Daigoro's got the best plan so far for sure.

Only I don't think the shell will stand up to much damage if the spiders try and stop it.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Only I don't think the shell will stand up to much damage if the spiders try and stop it.

I don't see why, unless they insist on having no buttresses/pillars for some weird reason.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I don't see why, unless they insist on having no buttresses/pillars for some weird reason.

Well like I posted earlier I don't think it will stand up to a concerted attack from the spiders, as while 6" of stone starts with lots of DR it will get whittled away quite quickly.

It's not the bites, they will be lucky to reduce DR by 1 per attack due to being imp and thus treated as semi-ablative by the stone. It's the follow-up 1d-3 corrosion (10 one-second cycles) per bite that the stone counts as ablative against!

And while obviously not all of the hundreds of spiders will be able to attack the shell at once, it has a total 10 hex facing these spiders can get at (plus the roof I guess)


Also any idea what kind of force the spell puts behind the movement? These spiders are pretty strong individually, and will be even more so dog piling it.

[Hide]

Originally Posted by gudmo

So me and my group got ourselves into a bad situation where we are inside a huge cavern (...) there we are, Wizard, Cleric, Barbarian and Swashbuckler under 5 ft of stone (...) the spiders are patient and that there are hundreds of them waiting above(...)

Well, it seems you got plenty of time! Are you getting to know each other well?

Assuming there is a way out, I would:

1. Ensure survival of the party, prepare them to resist fire, pain, shock, etc.
2. Approach to the exit and create air with high hydrogen/oxygen concentration (Between 70 and 80 percent hydrogen).
3. Gather the air into a single point until it is highly pressured. Maybe you can "take 20" here, because you got nothing else to do between providing your party with air and doing this trick.
4. Let some hydrogen/oxygen fill/transit the areas away from your position.
5. Let the hi-concentration hydrogen/oxygen mix out and Ignite it with fire; this will result in a big explosion, damaging your foes.
6. Since you are in a cave, the flames will transit the paths looking for oxygen/hydrogen and these flames will burn all your enemies. However, since you are in a place with a limited supply of air and very little hydrogen you will be OK (your cleric put lots of buffs to protect you).
7. If the cave is dark, the burnt bodies will provide you with light.
8. Remember to prepare some oxygen for your party when you leave!

If the GM asks, I would say that someone in your party studied "what makes an explosion". Maybe the mage or the swashbuckler (because swashbucklers might trick you too).

Bugs breathe trough the skin, so they will have horrible issues to breathe once they are burnt.

You will have to take care of the other details, ensuring your are not squished by the rocks, running, finding the escape route...

- Hide

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Only I don't think the shell will stand up to much damage if the spiders try and stop it.

The shell is 6" of stone, and should have DR 72* and HP 50 or so. These acid spiders have a 2d+1 (3) im attack, and the DR is semi-ablative against that. So it will take them about 2 minutes to chew through the rock, which is enough to cover 100 yards, and then the wizard can create a new shell for 7 FP and repeat the process. If the cleric casts Lend Energy and donates 7 FP at some point, they can just walk out of there because the wizard started with 15 FP and 14 ER and that's enough for 4 shells.

If he creates some weapon slits in each shell - and there's no reason not to, since Shape'd Earth forms do not have to be inherently stable - the swashbuckler and the barbarian can be killing any acid spiders that get close. It's probably not enough to keep the shell from being destroyed, but it'll slow the process of destruction a bit and give them something to do.

If things start to go wrong, when the second shell is nearly destroyed, the wizard can cast Force Dome Radius 3**, and everyone can huddle inside it while the wizard recovers all his energy and they come up with a new plan.

* Roughly halve the values of the 1' stone wall on Basic 558.
** 9 FP to cast, 5 FP to maintain every 10 minutes, but he recovers 10 FP/10 minutes and the Cleric can use Lend Energy to give him at least another 2 FP/10 minutes. Including casting costs, he recovers 3 FP in the first 10 minutes and 7 FP every additional 10 minutes they stay inside the Force Dome.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

The shell is 6" of stone, and should have DR 72* and HP 50 or so. These acid spiders have a 2d+1 (3) im attack, and the DR is semi-ablative against that. So it will take them about 2 minutes to chew through the rock, which is enough to cover 100 yards, and then the wizard can create a new shell for 7 FP and repeat the process.

The 2d+1 (3) imp attack is minor here - the bigger issue is the acid the spiders leave behind when they bite, which does 1d-3 corr every second for 10 seconds. That ablates at least 1 DR every second (stone is fully ablative against corr), and on average ablates 1.5 DR every second. Assuming the cycles don't stack, that means the spider is ablating 23 DR every 10 seconds (10 bites, at an average of 8 damage per bite, should ablate 8 DR, and the acid ablates 15 DR), so in half a minute your shell (or, rather, the parts of it being bitten) has been reduced to DR 3, and collapses shortly thereafter. So, the characters are able to cover about 25 yards between castings, and need about 4x as many castings as in your estimate.

This assumes, of course, that their acidic "poison" is able to eat through stone, but I suspect any GM who would put his PC's in such a situation is probably going to have the acid work just fine on stone.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

The shell is 6" of stone, and should have DR 72* and HP 50 or so. These acid spiders have a 2d+1 (3) im attack, and the DR is semi-ablative against that. So it will take them about 2 minutes to chew through the rock, which is enough to cover 100 yards, and then the wizard can create a new shell for 7 FP and repeat the process. If the cleric casts Lend Energy and donates 7 FP at some point, they can just walk out of there because the wizard started with 15 FP and 14 ER and that's enough for 4 shells..

What about the follow on corrosive acid attack? At 1d-3 corrosion (10 one-second cycles). On average each bite will ablate another 5dr off the DR in 10 seconds, and their biting once a second. Like I said it's not the bite itself, it's the acid follow on attack that will melt the DR. If my back of the envelope calculation is right with the acid alone from one spider just on an average of 0.5dr lost per second per bite for 10 seconds per bite, it will remove 71 DR in 19 seconds. Once the DR is low or down to it minimum the HP will follow quickly because that 2d+1 imp bite will start doing damage, so you are talking a lot faster than 2 mins. So to maintain a shell at that rate of loss it's a lot more castings and a lot more FP but with less time to support it.

Your other problem is that this will be happening on all facings and likely the roof as well. The party will have to keep an eye on each section for a spider coming through. Now we don't know the stat's of the party, but let's hope its the barbarian's 1 yard square that gets compromised first and not say the wizard's.

Basically you have functionally an endless supply of acid spiders, they are individually really good at destroying rock, and are also threat to the party members if they can get to them. These leaves aside more esoteric questions like does this spell move the rock shell with enough force to keep that 1Mv rate with however many spiders piled on top, piled up in front of it, and pushing from the sides, and so on,

I really think the best plan is to avoid contact rather than try and tough out contact, especially when you are going to be in contact for so long in terms of combat rounds.

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

If he creates some weapon slits in each shell - and there's no reason not to, since Shape'd Earth forms do not have to be inherently stable - the swashbuckler and the barbarian can be killing any acid spiders that get close. It's probably not enough to keep the shell from being destroyed, but it'll slow the process of destruction a bit and give them something to do.

I think weapon slits that you can successfully melee attack through as opposed to missile attacks through are not really going to work, especially if we're talking about four people (one of then SM+1) crammed together in 1 yard x 4 yard space. Lets hope no ones brought swinging weapons!

Ironically the wizard will be best here as they can LOS attacking spell at close range through tiny slits, only the wizard is keeping everyone alive by maintaining the stone shell.

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

If things start to go wrong, when the second shell is nearly destroyed, the wizard can cast Force Dome Radius 3**, and everyone can huddle inside it while the wizard recovers all his energy and they come up with a new plan.

* Roughly halve the values of the 1' stone wall on Basic 558.
** 9 FP to cast, 5 FP to maintain every 10 minutes, but he recovers 10 FP/10 minutes and the Cleric can use Lend Energy to give him at least another 2 FP/10 minutes. Including casting costs, he recovers 3 FP in the first 10 minutes and 7 FP every additional 10 minutes they stay inside the Force Dome.

I think like I said my overall problem with this idea in comparison to the tunnelling out idea is yeah OK in theory it's fast if it works and if it doesn't work you plop a force dome down and rethink, but your still in a worse position that you were in than when you started. There are too many fail points and the fail state is really bad.


EDIT: or what Varyon said!

And of course my figures are low balling for the acid damage at an average of 0.5 per sec per bite for 10 seconds. Because 1d-3 corr has a minimum (but also average) of 1 damage, not the average of 0.5 I gave it! So actually I have DR dropped to it's minimum in 12 seconds not 19.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The 2d+1 (3) imp attack is minor here - the bigger issue is the acid the spiders leave behind when they bite, which does 1d-3 corr every second for 10 seconds. That ablates at least 1 DR every second (stone is fully ablative against corr), and on average ablates 1.5 DR every second. Assuming the cycles don't stack, that means the spider is ablating 23 DR every 10 seconds (10 bites, at an average of 8 damage per bite, should ablate 8 DR, and the acid ablates 15 DR), so in half a minute your shell (or, rather, the parts of it being bitten) has been reduced to DR 3, and collapses shortly thereafter. So, the characters are able to cover about 25 yards between castings, and need about 4x as many castings as in your estimate.

This assumes, of course, that their acidic "poison" is able to eat through stone, but I suspect any GM who would put his PC's in such a situation is probably going to have the acid work just fine on stone.

Don't the cycles stack, each set is a separate follow on attack per bite?

(is there a rule for this I may have missed?)

[Tomsdad]

Just quickly are there two listings for these spiders?

My PDF of DF:2 has the Bite at 2d+1 imp and a follow up corr attack, but 2d+1 (3) imp has been referenced in this thread?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Just quickly are there two listings for these spiders?

My PDF of DF:2 has the Bite at 2d+1 imp and a follow up corr attack, but 2d+1 (3) imp has been referenced here?

They've been customised.

Originally Posted by gudmo

These spiders are the Acid Spiders from Dungeon Fantasy Monsters except these have Armor Piercing bite (3) which makes them extremely deadly.