The Gaming Den

So, I'm considering sending my 3.X party onto the surface of the Sun. Have any of you done such in your campaign. I've considered just making it burn like it was the Plane of Fire, blind & damage undead like it was the Positive Energy Plane, and have heavy gravity. All of this would be without it being considered planar traits, as it is still on the Prime.

Pathfinder took the route of the Sun being closer to a rolling sea of unimaginable heat and pressure and airlessness that can only be survived if you are immune to fire AND in the form of a creature native to the Plane of Fire, along with an ability to fly lest you simply swirl around from the solar winds. This means only PCs that have wish or the like are allowed to go here unless it's in a plot-designated place.

Do you have any experiences with solar-adventure?

At one point I designed a scenario that involved a powerful lich building a fortress in close orbit around the sun. There were a bunch of big bubbles shielded from the radiation, but there were also long exposed bridges and pits that could drop you out into unprotected space. I took a lot of inspiritation from Cloud City in Star Wars.

PCs and lich minions protected themselves with magical bubbles of force that were tuned to keep out harmful wavelengths of light, and sometimes with suits of powered armor.

The lich had big solar collectors converting to magical energy, which was used in a factory to mass produce constructs and specific pieces of gear.

Another thing to remember is that stars are LOUD, fort vs deafness every round.

I think it would be a hell of a lot hotter than the plane of fire, though.

Required:

• Necklace of Adaptation
• Fire Immunity
• Flight
• Fire-immune spacesuit (for pressure)

...
What else?

According to wikipedia, our sun's surface gravity is about 28 times our own, so I don't think the heavy gravity trait will really cut it.

Your PCs would need:
Immunity to Fire
ability to not breath
Immunity to Force
Ability to survive positive energy on some ridiculous scale.

No amount of DR or resistance is going to cut it. They would need absolute immunity. Oh also, they're going to need some defense against Dispel Magic, and they need to be able to reapply their immunity while overlapping. Even 1/100000th of a second of lapse, would kill the character.

The sun does you know a zillion points of damage a round.

The Sun is a fiery chariot. If you can handle stabbing Apollo in the face, you can handle jacking his ride.

Whatever wrote:The Sun is a fiery chariot. If you can handle stabbing Apollo in the face, you can handle jacking his ride.

If Virgil is using the Pathfinder setting, they've explicitly included a lot of "real world science" in the setting. You can zip to and adventure on other planets in the solar system or beyond. The sun really is a big ball of burning hydrogen and not something some dude hauls across the sky. The whole setting really is less mythic in instances that it doesn't conflict with elves riding dragons and flinging fireballs in exotic locations.

I acknowledged what Pathfinder does in my second paragraph, contemplated a version where it's a really bright version of the Plane of Fire (walkable surface and everything), and am actually looking to see if anyone else has used the Sun as an adventuring location and how you handled the environment.

The Sun doesn't have to be hotter than the Plane of Fire. This is a setting where you can go to a dimension of burning, and is very likely the source of the concept of hot, and only suffer 3d10 per round.

Another poster brought it up but it bears repeating: radiation. I don't know how characters can deal with it, would they even understand the concept? Besides just gamma rays there is alpha and beta radiation. Beta radiation is just electrons, so maybe getting immunity to electricity would work. Alpha radiation is basically helium nuclei, maybe the PCs can deflect them with a sufficiently powerful magnetic field. I can't find the gamma output of a typical G2 right now, it might be mostly absorbed by all the gas between where fusion happens and where the PCs are.

I once had some thoughts about a planetary campaign where each planet was ruled by a god (e.g. Mercury rules Mercury, Venus rules Venus, Apollo rules the sun, Diana rules the moon, etc.). I would have had the sun be a pretty normal planet, though -- just fiery, like the plane of elemental fire.

Actually, you might not need to worry about the lack of pressure if you have a Necklace of Adaptation

SRD wrote:This necklace is a heavy chain with a platinum medallion. The magic of the necklace wraps the wearer in a shell of fresh air, making him immune to all harmful vapors and gases (such as cloudkill and stinking cloud effects, as well as inhaled poisons) and allowing him to breathe, even underwater or in a vacuum.

Juton wrote:Another poster brought it up but it bears repeating: radiation. I don't know how characters can deal with it, would they even understand the concept? Besides just gamma rays there is alpha and beta radiation. Beta radiation is just electrons, so maybe getting immunity to electricity would work. Alpha radiation is basically helium nuclei, maybe the PCs can deflect them with a sufficiently powerful magnetic field. I can't find the gamma output of a typical G2 right now, it might be mostly absorbed by all the gas between where fusion happens and where the PCs are.

It's not just D&D characters not understanding the concept, but in a world where Spiderman-grade webbing can be brewed by a Renfaire guy in the woods and stuffed in an exploding sack, science doesn't work the same. Should radiation even exist, as we know it, in D&D?

If you're literally walking on the sun, and not flying in its upper atmosphere, then a lack of pressure isn't a problem. The problem is that there is way too much pressure.

If it can handle deep under water, we will pretend it can handle the pressure of the sun. I mean, he's trying to make it doable.

I would treat Radiation as Positive Energy in the D&D/PF setting.

sabs wrote:I would treat Radiation as Positive Energy in the D&D/PF setting.

If I wanted to use it, I'd probably treat it as "light" type damage, a la Searing Light or Sunbeam.

I would probably just treat radiation as poison damage, if was going to include it at all.

If you can get sunburn on a planet or equivalent thereof, then solar radiation must by necessity present a greater threat next to the sun.

You can't adventure on the surface of the real sun because the whole thing is a giant plasma fluid ball. It would be like trying to adventure on the surface of the troposphere.

So basically a real "sun adventure" would be an "air adventure" with sunglasses on.

Otherwise, what you have is "planet fire", which is honestly not that bad. Instead of the Elemental Plane of Fire, where cities are usually built on stones floating over lava you'd have cities built on "sunspots" over swirling masses of convective gasses.

Sashi wrote:You can't adventure on the surface of the real sun because the whole thing is a giant plasma fluid ball. It would be like trying to adventure on the surface of the troposphere.

While it is technically true that the sun is a giant ball of plasma, the fact of the mater is that once you get down to the core you get a density of up to 150 g/cm^3

For comparison, solid iron had a density of 7.8 g/cm^3. If the heat doesn't vaporize you and the pressure doesn't flatten you, you can walk on it once you get down deep enough.

Would you walk on it, or float in it first, though?

Take the Spelljammer interpretation, where other planets/celestial bodies are other planes, and move on with your life.

May I please ask... What is the allure of visiting the sun? Why is this a cool thing to do?

Maj wrote:May I please ask... What is the allure of visiting the sun? Why is this a cool thing to do?

"Cool," is the wrong word for this.

"Hot," is a better one -- as in, "adventures on the sun are the hot thing to do this week."