Water Treatment Spells

[Vebyast]

Using undead as your personal servants is very, very handy in a lot of ways but sure as fuck not for large-scale projects.

I think that a lot of the undead-as-laborers plans depend on the playing-with-fire interpretation of uncontrolled skeletons given in the Tome of Necromancy. You have a load of necromancers just creating undead as fast as they can, giving them an order, and immediately relinquishing control of them to raise and order another batch. The orders would be a complex set of commands that turns each skeleton into a node in a botnet. You stand off to the edge and shout commands that the botnet reacts to as ordered by its programming - "SEE-DEE TILDE SLASH SOURCE SLASH PYRAMID ENTER DOT-SLASH PYRAMID ENTER".

[JigokuBosatsu]

The orders would be a complex set of commands that turns each skeleton into a node in a botnet. You stand off to the edge and shout commands that the botnet reacts to as ordered by its programming - "SEE-DEE TILDE SLASH SOURCE SLASH PYRAMID ENTER DOT-SLASH PYRAMID ENTER".

Oh, that's not fair, now I have to write a short story about this! And I wonder where all my free time goes...

[Vebyast]

The orders would be a complex set of commands that turns each skeleton into a node in a botnet. You stand off to the edge and shout commands that the botnet reacts to as ordered by its programming - "SEE-DEE TILDE SLASH SOURCE SLASH PYRAMID ENTER DOT-SLASH PYRAMID ENTER".

Oh, that's not fair, now I have to write a short story about this! And I wonder where all my free time goes...

At least you only have a short story to write. I'm going to be up all night trying to figure out how to write an x86 emulator in Skeleton.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Sigged for great justice.

[DSMatticus]

I'm going to be up all night trying to figure out how to write an x86 emulator in Skeleton.

Judging by the examples, Skeleton doesn't look like it has any instructions but output to device and unconditional jump 0. You couldn't even emulate a toaster.

Edit: But programmable skeletons would be totally awesome.

[fectin]

Each skeleton is a single gate. It's actually really easy to build, it's just not worth it: too many skeletons and too long a cycle time.

[Prak]

conceivably you could animate flies as skeletons.... and they'd be as functional as a human skeleton for programming.

[Meikle641]

For the record, the 3e book "Arms and Equipment Guide" (I fucking love this book) had an item for getting rid of large amounts of water: The Eversoaking Sponge. It sucks up 1,000 gallons a round, to a max total of 225,000- and get this, when you wring it the amount that comes out is equal to a normal sponge.

So, like, every 2.5 minutes you can destroy 225,000 gallons of water. Has a cost of 26,400 GP and a CL of 11.

[fectin]

Sure. But the reaction time and propagation time would still kill you, to say nothing of the loading times.

Contingency might work as the basis for a computer, but I'm not sure how to get output, and it would be immensely expensive, xp-wise.

I think you could use contingency as an arcane beacon with enough shenanigans though: contingency a doublecast, mitigated contingency spell, condition "a contingency spell activated within the past minute", then set it off. It requires some squinting at how the spell works, but I think that gets you a geometrically increasing series of contingencies, cast at 10 minute intervals. That quickly gets you a beacon of aura that you can see with arcane sight, and otherwise can't see at all. Shutter it with lead for a sneaky lighthouse or communication device.

[JigokuBosatsu]

You could use a shit ton of wights and... oh, never mind.

[Vebyast]

I think that I can get RAM by modifying memories of things coming through doors. "Remember that the human that came through door 167 was a cultist and do the next thing on the list" and "Remember that the human that came through door 167 was not a cultist and do the next thing on the list" are 1 and 0.

Conditional branches are done by doing different things for cultists and non-cultists; "attack anything that comes through that curtain that isn't a cultist" means that "do the tenth thing on the list if you saw a cultist come through door 167, otherwise do the next thing on the list" works.

Conditional branches and bit-flipping mean that we have turing-completeness by reduction to boolfuck.

---

Register machines are annoying, though, and kind of stretching it. A higher-maintenance, though rather less arguable, system would be to give the skeleton a bunch of numbered cards and have it emulate a simple stack machine.

[K]

Not according to 1st ed Manual of the Planes... the Negative Plane was completely sterile.

Bur who cares about the plane? I mean, the positive energy plane is sterile, bu that doesn't mean that normal living creatures full of positive energy don't get diseases.

In fact, since mummies and ghouls are both super-infectious, it stands to reason that undead can just be normally infectious.

I mean, even skeletons might be dissease carriers since they might have just enough negative energy in them to spawn weird undead diseases in the same way that living things have just enough positive energy to spawn normal diseases.

I'm a little confused here. How is this different in kind from DMs who discover new and exciting ways to make Wish useless? In both cases, you're suggesting cockblocking the players by inventing previously undocumented costs and consequences. There may be some key difference I'm not seeing; if so, I'd appreciate you pointing it out.

On your specific points:
Mummies infect you with disease in certain specific cercumstances. Eyes of Fear and Flame light you on fire in certain specific circumstances. Eyes of Fear and Flame are not themselves on fire, and mummies may not be themselves diseased (it's a little unclear). Neither of these creatures' existence implies that any other undead are on fire, nor that other undead are diseased.

Where the rules are silent, it's actually fine for DMs to fill in the blanks. That's how we get more flavorful and immersive settings.

I mean, on a different point there is nothing that even says that undead are ageless, even though people play them like they are. Those silent areas of the rules are the difference between telling a good story and a crap story.

Back in the day liches actually aged. After several thousand years, they became demiliches because their bodies had fallen apart and zombies sometimes became skeletons. Now, if he had just assumed that all undead are perfectly ageless, those stories can't be told any more.

Second, the RAW has no assumption that people are going to be running undead armies, unlike the explicit assumption that people are going to be casting Wish above and beyond efreet chain-binding. Altering an explicit assumption is a dick move where filling in a blank space is just good gaming.

I mean, Libris Mortis is great because it fills a lot of holes like how often do feeding undead feed or how it gets harder to turn undead when there are a lot in a small space. Suddenly accusing the DM of being a dick because he's now making you feed your cohort ghoul is an unfair charge because he really should be filling in holes to make the game feel more real.

[fectin]

Okay. I see where you're coming from there. But again the same thing applies to wish: the spell description is silent with respect to the source of the items you're wishing for; filling that blank in must be good, right?

It is exactly as explicit in the rules that people will cast animate dead as that they will cast wish. If one is an explicit assumption, so is the other. If it's not okay to add surprise penalties to one, it shouldn't be okay to add surprise penalties to the other.

"Back in the day" is genuinely interesting, but it isn't an arguement. Back in the day, wish aged you and and had Gygaxian interpretation built in. That is no longer true, and not relevent to the third edition world. Similarly, it is not relevant to the third edition world that undead previously worked differently.

[Just another user]

Not according to 1st ed Manual of the Planes... the Negative Plane was completely sterile.

I don't think that many of the things mentioned in this thread would even work (or would be incredibly difficult to make) in 1st ed.

Beside even if the negative plane was sterile (and with sterile do you mean 'without life"? Because undead germs would not count as 'life') this don't mean that a creature animated by a (very small) quantity of negative energy would be equally sterile as well.

And would that mean that creature imbued of positive energy would be infected?

[K]

Okay. I see where you're coming from there. But again the same thing applies to wish: the spell description is silent with respect to the source of the items you're wishing for; filling that blank in must be good, right?

It is exactly as explicit in the rules that people will cast animate dead as that they will cast wish. If one is an explicit assumption, so is the other. If it's not okay to add surprise penalties to one, it shouldn't be okay to add surprise penalties to the other.

"Back in the day" is genuinely interesting, but it isn't an arguement. Back in the day, wish aged you and and had Gygaxian interpretation built in. That is no longer true, and not relevent to the third edition world. Similarly, it is not relevant to the third edition world that undead previously worked differently.

Well, it's an explicit assumption that you will set up a personal undead guy or a small collection: that's why the spell has limits. It's not an explicit assumption that you will be building entire armies out of undead using one spell, so it's perfectly fine to say "close proximity to several hundred undead over time means you are going to be spreading disease" because that's thematic and is within the story elements that a DM is expected to add.

As for Wish, it's an explicit assumption that the items come to you without further hassle. That being said, there is no explicit assumption that any particular item you can imagine even exists in your world. For all you know, it might be magically impossible to create a certain item because it's not listed somewhere. You can't complain about DM fiat when a given rule calls on DM fiat.

Also, back in the day arguments are fine when there are no contradictions. It's pretty much assumed that lots of holes will be filed by DM fiat or DM-inspired setting elements, so saying "I'm going to fill this hole with an old-school thing we did" is as valid as saying "I'm going to fill this hole with a cool idea I had."

[DSMatticus]

"attack anything that comes through that curtain that isn't a cultist"

Feed the sacrifices to the great machine, such that it might compute things unknowable to man!

More seriously, if a skeleton can tell the difference between cultists and non-cultists, it can also probably tell the difference between red and blue marbles, so people walking with feet can probably be replaced with marbles rolling in trays. AND-gate using skeletons and marbles: "Put a blue marble in your output tray for any pair of marbles in your input tray that isn't two reds" is pretty similar to "attack any pair of people that enter the room and aren't two cultists," and similar rearrangements for anything else you had in mind.

It's also not clear that remember works or means anything to a skeleton, but that's easily solvable because you can have a skeleton put a marble in a tray based on what he sees and that will store information even if the skeleton can't: "when a cultist walks through the room, put a red marble in the memory tray." And then that skeleton or some other skeleton can respond to what's in the memory tray at read time.

The biggest problem is that this is all such a destructive system: it's not clear that skeletons can have a "list of things to do" so much as just one thing they do on repeat, which means there's a lot of additional skeletons (or outside work) that's needed to put the machine back in its original state after a skeleton does its task. But if they do have a list of things and a 'wait for...', you can build a system clock relatively easily and it all works out, but those feel like big assumptions.

[Grek]

Fuck using marbles for memory, we're going to use the undead themselves:

Step one: Get a bunch of skeletons. I personally suggest using rats, as they are the only easily available 1/4th HD creature with reasonable land, swim and climb speeds.

Step two: Get a bunch of boards and partition these boards into numbered grids. All of your rats sit off to the side of the board unless otherwise told.

Step three:

AND Gate: "While squares #A and #B both contain undead that are wagging their tails, go to square #C and wag your tail. Otherwise, don't."

XOR Gate: "While either square #A or #B, but not both contain undead that are wagging their tails, go to square #C and wag your tail. Otherwise, don't."

OR Gate: "While either square #A or #B or both #A and #B contain undead that are wagging their tails, go to square #C and wag your tail. Otherwise, don't."

NOR Gate: "While neither square #A or #B contain undead that are wagging their tails, go to square #C and wag your tail. Otherwise, don't."

NOR Gate: "While squares #A and #B both contain the same number of undead that are wagging their tails, go to square #C and wag your tail. Otherwise, don't."

NAND Gate: "While squares #A and #B do not both contain undead that are wagging their tails, go to square #C and wag your tail. Otherwise, don't."

Strictly speaking, you only NEED the the NOR Gate skeletons, all of the rest of the gates can be build using a pile of NORs.

Your system excepts inputs in the form of undead with the orders along the lines of "If <thing that a skeleton can detect> happens, go to square #27 and wag your tail." and gives outputs in the form of skeletal ettins with orders along the lines of "If squares #15 through #23 all contain undead wagging their tails, go to the Ritual Chamber and kill everything present not wearing a black robe."

[Prak]

You know what else is in theme for stories about using magic to improve global quality of life in D&D? Turn a haz-mat suit inside out, and put it on skeletons that you're working with.

Problem fixed.

[Chamomile]

The biggest problem is that this is all such a destructive system: it's not clear that skeletons can have a "list of things to do" so much as just one thing they do on repeat, which means there's a lot of additional skeletons (or outside work) that's needed to put the machine back in its original state after a skeleton does its task. But if they do have a list of things and a 'wait for...', you can build a system clock relatively easily and it all works out, but those feel like big assumptions.

Couldn't you just have a built-in system for resetting the skeletons using other skeletons? But then who would reset those skeletons...Well, since the resetter skeletons serve no function except resetting the machine, you could just instruct them to reset themselves as soon as they accomplish their assigned task, since unlike the computer skeletons they don't need to keep applications open or whatever.

[fectin]

That's really awesome, if only because you could have either a monster named Function23 or call a function labelled KillAllHumans, and it would.

That setup also makes neural nets easy; start a skeleton in each room of a dungeon. If someone comes in that it doesn't recognize, it sprints to a designated area. A slow process sends a different skeleton to reset one rat to it's starting room. If more than X rats accumulate (invasion is progressing quickly), summon the kraken (or whatever your particular doomsday is).

Well, it's an explicit assumption that you will set up a personal undead guy or a small collection: that's why the spell has limits. It's not an explicit assumption that you will be building entire armies out of undead using one spell, so it's perfectly fine to say "close proximity to several hundred undead over time means you are going to be spreading disease" because that's thematic and is within the story elements that a DM is expected to add.

Did you mean to say implicit here? If not, I can't find your reference.
If I follow right though, your argument goes like this:
1) We can infer from the rules of the spell how the designers intended Animate Dead to be used
2) Rules are only valid when applied as thematically intended.
3) Using gangs of undead for manual labor is not the thematically intended use
4) Therefore, we need to add new rules to cover this new use
I think that's basically a vallid arguement, but it applies just as well to any sort of knot-cutting, and justifies dickery with chain binding efreeti too (nothing says how efreeti react to being bound, so its a perfectly fine to say "all efreeti are dicks").

Further, I'm not sure why you would make an argument about thematics and intended use in a discussion about how to use magic for unintended uses to fundamentally alter a setting.

As for Wish, it's an explicit assumption that the items come to you without further hassle. That being said, there is no explicit assumption that any particular item you can imagine even exists in your world. For all you know, it might be magically impossible to create a certain item because it's not listed somewhere. You can't complain about DM fiat when a given rule calls on DM fiat.

My fault for not being clear here. It's perfectly valid for a DM to say "there's no such thing as a staff of infinite wishes, and no you can't have one"; it's not valid to add exciting new drawbacks to every wish. "The wands of CLW you wished for are all secretly cursed" is not exciting and thematic, it's just plain antagonistic.
Skeletons inherently spreading disease falls into that second category. I'd be willing to buy that zombies are masses of carrion, and there are problems endemic to that, but that's not what we're talking about.

You suggested that negative energy inherently spawns superdiseases (and also that positive energy spawns normal diseases). That means every time clerics turn or rebuke undead, the party gets the flu. While there's nothing contradicting that, it's not exactly supported either.

Also, back in the day arguments are fine when there are no contradictions. It's pretty much assumed that lots of holes will be filed by DM fiat or DM-inspired setting elements, so saying "I'm going to fill this hole with an old-school thing we did" is as valid as saying "I'm going to fill this hole with a cool idea I had."

Okay. As I read this, your point is that "back in the day" is functionally equivalent to "i made something up". I buy that, but it means that Back in the Day is not itself a reason to do or to refrain from doing anything.

[Meikle641]

Another useful bit of psi (or magic) is making a cement/stone silo and filling it with grain, then using Minor Creation to fill up the empty space to the brim with say, vegetable oil or something. Cover it in a stone slab or something, then wait for the substance to disappear. Thus you have sealed, air-less storage that will allow your grain supply to survive untainted for possibly decades, depending on how it was stored and whether the container gets breached.

[Vebyast]

Thus you have sealed, air-less storage that will allow your grain supply to survive untainted for possibly decades, depending on how it was stored and whether the container gets breached.

You couldn't just use that for preserving grain. Your vacuum would be pretty bad, at least a few torr, but that's more than enough for chemistry and some basic particle physics. You can run a cathode ray tube in that vacuum pretty easily, for example.

You could also build a vacuum airship using this and a prismatic sphere. Total lift would be pretty dang big. Expensive, unfortunately, since prismatic sphere is ninth-level. Too bad Resilient Sphere specifies that "the subject can breathe normally."

[K]

Well, it's an explicit assumption that you will set up a personal undead guy or a small collection: that's why the spell has limits. It's not an explicit assumption that you will be building entire armies out of undead using one spell, so it's perfectly fine to say "close proximity to several hundred undead over time means you are going to be spreading disease" because that's thematic and is within the story elements that a DM is expected to add.

Did you mean to say implicit here? If not, I can't find your reference.
If I follow right though, your argument goes like this:
1) We can infer from the rules of the spell how the designers intended Animate Dead to be used
2) Rules are only valid when applied as thematically intended.
3) Using gangs of undead for manual labor is not the thematically intended use
4) Therefore, we need to add new rules to cover this new use
I think that's basically a vallid arguement, but it applies just as well to any sort of knot-cutting, and justifies dickery with chain binding efreeti too (nothing says how efreeti react to being bound, so its a perfectly fine to say "all efreeti are dicks").

Further, I'm not sure why you would make an argument about thematics and intended use in a discussion about how to use magic for unintended uses to fundamentally alter a setting.

As for Wish, it's an explicit assumption that the items come to you without further hassle. That being said, there is no explicit assumption that any particular item you can imagine even exists in your world. For all you know, it might be magically impossible to create a certain item because it's not listed somewhere. You can't complain about DM fiat when a given rule calls on DM fiat.

My fault for not being clear here. It's perfectly valid for a DM to say "there's no such thing as a staff of infinite wishes, and no you can't have one"; it's not valid to add exciting new drawbacks to every wish. "The wands of CLW you wished for are all secretly cursed" is not exciting and thematic, it's just plain antagonistic.
Skeletons inherently spreading disease falls into that second category. I'd be willing to buy that zombies are masses of carrion, and there are problems endemic to that, but that's not what we're talking about.

You suggested that negative energy inherently spawns superdiseases (and also that positive energy spawns normal diseases). That means every time clerics turn or rebuke undead, the party gets the flu. While there's nothing contradicting that, it's not exactly supported either.

I said explicit and meant explicit.

The rules explicitly allow you to use the spell to command 4/HD per level of undead, and the commands you can verbally get them to do is attack, follow, and stay and attack. It's also implied in their write-up that since they lack initiative, they won't do anything at all unless commanded. (Using clerical Commanding after they are uncontrolled probably opens up the full range of choices of commands that a skeleton can do since Commanding is completely unbounded).

Now, when you are faced with a situation where the rules don't cover it, you have three choices:

1. Say the situation can't happen, then write a narrative for why not.

2. Extend the existing rules to cover the new situation, but being thematically-appropriate.

3. Write new rules that are thematically-appropriate.


Ok, when people get exposed to diseases is completely DM fiat, but most people use personal rules of only making people get diseases when they do something gross.

Now, since the rules for having undead don't really say anything about whether they carry diseases(but they are immune), and do have rules where some do have diseases, we are probably in a situation #2 where our personal fiat rules of generally only making people get diseases when they do someone gross apply here where large numbers of undead are being used near people.

If we are being nice to players, we can just write rules where undead carry diseases so you shouldn't eat undead flesh or touch them or use things they have touched, but we'd say that they don't have airborne diseases unless otherwise statted as such because then even undead creation spells would be super-dicey.

Our other option is just to say that undead don't spread diseases because the rules are silent on the issue and people get diseases by DM fiat. We then create a narrative about negative energy making things sterile.

All of those are viable options.

"How things have been done before" just informs theme. I mean, if we've decided to using Crawling Darkness as a theme in the past, then undead being biologically as dangerous as they are morally and physically fits in with theme, so we should make them disease carriers.

Now, exercising fiat might mean that you are being a dick, but it's a risk people take with any ruleset that has fiat. Changing rules midstream definitely means you are a dick. Writing new rules in an open space and being open about it never means you are a dick.

So you go back to efreet. Efreet are all evil, so they are by definition "dicks." They are all free to seek revenge because that's a part of the game that is DM fiat and the DM is not a dick if your chainbinding scheme leads to constant attacks by efreet. It's even thematically-appropriate that they'd seek you out to kill you for the insult of binding them, even if they got something in return because evil people are dicks like that.

The DM would be a dick if he said that efreet wishes always end up Gygaxian, because the limits for some wishes are explicitly not Gygaxian. He's changing the rules and that's a dick move without substantial prior notice, but is sometimes forgivable if a setting-breaking thing is being proposed.

If the DM created rules for bargains with efreet that please them enough that they won't seek you out to murder you, then he's not being a dick because he's openly writing rules in conceptually blank space.

[fectin]

Thus you have sealed, air-less storage that will allow your grain supply to survive untainted for possibly decades, depending on how it was stored and whether the container gets breached.

You couldn't just use that for preserving grain. Your vacuum would be pretty bad, at least a few torr, but that's more than enough for chemistry and some basic particle physics. You can run a cathode ray tube in that vacuum pretty easily, for example.

You could also build a vacuum airship using this and a prismatic sphere. Total lift would be pretty dang big. Expensive, unfortunately, since prismatic sphere is ninth-level. Too bad Resilient Sphere specifies that "the subject can breathe normally."

Unfortunately, lift wouldn't be that great. A cubic foot of helium lifts about one ounce. Cutting down the weight of the helium just doesn't change that enough (vacuum gets you a bit less than 20% extra). Prismatic sphere gets some of that back for being a weightless container, but your total lift is still around 262 lbs.
If there were some light, but impermeable material, that would solve airships. Otherwise you probably have to fall back on steamcopters and haunt-shift aircraft.
You could probably fab prismatic walls into a reasonable airship, but it would be immensely expensive. Assume walls can be cast intersecting, and will support eachother perfectly when they are. Also assume you have a way to attach to that shape. Get a level 20 wizard to cast these; if you're going to blow that much xp, you want to really get your money's worth.
For convenience, let's put these in a hexagon, and say that the volume lost to seams is negligible. That's a cost of 24,000 xp to construct one of these segments, and the ends are uncapped. You can get more volume if this is a stubby tube, but that's only useful if youre making rather a lot of them, an blowing hundreds of thousands of xp for an airship is a bit steep. Now, you still have to seal off the ends somehow, but each of these segments can lift a bit over 10 tons. Why not just seal the ends? Well, maybe you want to stack two end-to-end, or two beside eachother and can cap them more efficiently. Either way, it takes about another 16k xp to cap these off. That hurts, but it does get you a decent flying fortress.

Hmm. That's actually kind of cool: take two of those tubes, construct them side-by-side and remove the shared wall. Cap them together (48k xp) use the trick to make them vacuum-filled (hold off until everything else is done). Build some bubbly steel plates, use those to attach to your "balloon". Lead line everything to block dispels. Hang a gondola from the underside. Put one of the boilers described earlier in it for propulsion. Use a create water device or a decanter of endless water to adjust your ballast. Live above the clouds forever.

[Prak]

If there were some light, but impermeable material, that would solve airships. Otherwise you probably have to fall back on steamcopters and haunt-shift aircraft.

...force? shadow? What about magicing up a ghost touch enabled whale ghost, or something? Fuck, undead whale, give it flight, permanency, or a potion of flight, or a bit and bridle of flight, or whatever.

You could probably fab prismatic walls into a reasonable airship, but it would be immensely expensive. Assume walls can be cast intersecting, and will support eachother perfectly when they are. Also assume you have a way to attach to that shape. Get a level 20 wizard to cast these; if you're going to blow that much xp, you want to really get your money's worth.
For convenience, let's put these in a hexagon, and say that the volume lost to seams is negligible. That's a cost of 24,000 xp to construct one of these segments, and the ends are uncapped. You can get more volume if this is a stubby tube, but that's only useful if youre making rather a lot of them, an blowing hundreds of thousands of xp for an airship is a bit steep. Now, you still have to seal off the ends somehow, but each of these segments can lift a bit over 10 tons. Why not just seal the ends? Well, maybe you want to stack two end-to-end, or two beside eachother and can cap them more efficiently. Either way, it takes about another 16k xp to cap these off. That hurts, but it does get you a decent flying fortress.

So... Prismatic wall, formed into a tube... you could probably just turn it into a tapered cigar shape.... but then how do you move it? Why Prismatic Wall? What about a windowless cell form Forcecage, with gate effects as doors. You could conceivably create two force cages, one inside the other, with vacuum between, and the inner force cage being the passenger cavity. Though I don't know how that'd affect what you're trying to do.