EXPLOSIONS

[Rymosrac]

So. . . I've got a random inkling to blow some stuff up ingame real good, and I'm looking for options on how to do that. That's pretty vague.

What I'm looking for:
-Things that go boom.

What I'm not looking for:
-Spellcasting. If I wanted to blow stuff up with a locate city nuke, a billion scraps of paper with explosive runes on them, or 300 fireballs in a round via arcane fusion, I wouldn't be needing help.

Ideas so far:
-Ditherbombs from RotD. Not much damage, high cost, and not particularly easy to set off EXACTLY when you want them to blow.
-Explosives from Secrets of Sarlonna: Available in various sizes, blast radius is okay, but not impressive, cost is okay, but not impressive.  Damage against structures can get impressive with a high enough skill check.
-Blast Globes, MIC: I'd rather avoid resorting to magic items if possible, mundane is preferable to me for flavor reasons. But these are okay-ish if you really just want to blow crap up. Reuseable, decent damage, range, and secondary effects for cost.

Thanks in advance!

[snakeman830]

The DMG has renaissance-level tech in it, which includes bombs.  Consider those.

Otherwise, Blast Disks are another magic item which is handy, due to being able to be set as timed or proximity mines.

[veekie]

Lots and lots of oil in extradimensional storage to help make the boom go the extra mile.
It's cheap, so it serves to augment the onfireness of everything.

[Rymosrac]

The renaissance explosives in the DMG can hardly be called cost-effective at any level. 150gp for 2d6 damage in a 5' burst, DC15 ref save for half, with a move action required to light the thing before you throw it. Even if you could afford them at level 1 they wouldn't be worth using the vast majority of the time.

The modern-era explosives in thar area fare somewhat better - but they're even less likely to be allowed, and have no listed price, which makes it very difficult to judge cost-effectiveness.

Blast disks start to resemble something useful - but you're still paying 900gp at a time for a 5d6 fireball. Unless you're an artificer with a lot of resources invested in cost-reduction. Without that, though, the SoS detpacks give far more bang for buck, especially against objects.

[telehax]

Alchemist. Fire. Spam.
Get shrink item if necessary.

[BowenSilverclaw]

Alchemist. Fire. Spam.
Get shrink item if necessary.

Too bad Energy Resistance can pretty much negate its effectiveness...

[Rymosrac]

^ This.

Also they don't so much explode as burn. Shrug.

[RobbyPants]

About the only way to get massive damage like that would be to combine alchemists fire with Sneak Attack.  This is technically all fire damage, although the vast majority of it comes from you throwing it at your opponent's soft spots and not from the fire itself.  Also, it just bursts into flames more than explodes.

Talk to your DM about house-ruling something.  Those DMG bombs aren't so bad if the DM lowers the cost.  You could create an impact version that doesn't need to be lit.  Perhaps the damage and DC can be raised for a cost.

[kadeity]

It sounds like what youre playing isnt so much an explosives specialist as it is "i absolutely must destroy this city"

If you had been playing someone who you just wanted to be an explosives specailist, i would have suggested that you play an Alchemist from the new pathfinder book, Advanced Players Guide. They can make a number of bombs per day equal to their level, and they do a number of d6 damage equal to half their level, and can be modified to do energy damage, or make smoke, or what-have-you.

Good class, seriously.

[Rymosrac]

@Kadeity: Really looking more for options requiring minimal dedication from a build, but I'll look at the pathfinder alchemist. Half your class level in d6's doesn't sound that impressive though. What I'm really after is cost-effective ways for a noncaster to either A. Demolish reinforced structures in as gratuitously explosive a manner as possible, or B. Set up traps that do the same thing to people. Combat Trapsmith would be decent if it had more balls and didn't require as many class levels / feats to optimize.

Edit: Yeah. . . alchemist's bombs are pretty underwhelming. Damage is a lowercase meh, and the status effects are too little, too late in the game.

@RobbyPants:
House-ruling is always an option, but here I'm really just trying to explore what options are available with published material.

The Alchemists Fire + Sneak Attack is old and fun, if not particularly explodey. One twist on that trick invented by a local player is a custom wondrous item that 1/day casts a Reach Spell + Chain Spell (Local DM's unanimously allow Reach + Chain) Launch Object, resulting in the rogue packing around a 10-barreled bazooka that launches a great many vials, resulting in a great many ranged touch attack sneak attacks as a standard action. Think the market cost for the launcher came out to something like 10.8k.

[Naldor]

If you want explosions that don't involve spellcasting, there are quite a few ways I can think of to generate big booms by combining real-world physics with certain D&D magic items.  There's a line in the DMG that says the Material Plane operates under the same physical laws as the real world.

I can think of two ways offhand to generate hypervelocity (50%+ the speed of light) projectiles, a possibility which might work to create a fusion bomb.  Shrink Item could lead to other shenanigans of course.

If your DM is someone who will permit such techniques, and you're interested I'll post details on a few city-busters, though these could certainly be scaled down to the level of individual buildings.

[Rymosrac]

I'm actually pretty familiar with a lot of the old hypervelocity / hyperpressure bomb tricks (ring gate accelerators, for instance), but sure, post away, might be something I haven't seen before.

[SorO_Lost]

Stormcaster 5^(stormwreck) adds a 'boom' effect to any spell that deals electricity damage and said sonic boom can Stun creatures.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Diablo II diablerie sourcebook has a couple
Exploding potion: 100 gp, range increment 10 feet, direct hit 3d6 fire damage, splash of d6 fire damage.  However, it bypasses fire resistance.
Fulminating potion:25 gp, 10' increment, d6 acid on hit with 1 point acid of splash, lasts for d4 rounds.

[Benly]

5 levels of Combat Trapsmith lets you set 5d6 mini-fireball traps as a standard action from zero-cost "improvised materials" with a Craft: Trapmaking check. You also get flashbang traps and stinkbomb traps. It's not exactly earthshaking, but you can do it with no magic items, a pure non-spellcasting entry, and zero construction cost once you have the fourth class level.

[Leram]

What you're looking for I think is the custom mechanical trap rules (srd), combine with Kobold and extraordinary trapsmith (races of dragon) for -50% cost/time. Stack on some more cost reduction feats, and possibly item familiar so you can make the craft(trapmaking) checks earlier than normal and you should end up eventually roughly where you want to be.

IIRC setting a trap is a full round action that provokes though, so you'd need to either prepare beforehand or make a workaround.

[SorO_Lost]

What if you tie the trap to your chest and set it off by hugging people?

[Rymosrac]

Problem with the mechanical trap rules is how incredibly vague they are in relation to how you quantify the damage they deal and how they can deal it. Been wrestling with those things, trying to squeeze something coherent out of them for quite a while.

[altpersona]

i thought it was pretty clear how much damage a mechanical trap deals.

you price it by 1/7 off average damage.

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the last few posts got me thinking about traps in general.

has anyone make an expert trapsmith build? seems to me that they didnt put a limit on trap damage. they also built in 'auto hit' and 'multiple target'.

so, given a high craft skill, lots of time, and a sick desire to do damage, you can kill anything susceptible to physical damage with a silly trap.

i dont see anything about trap size requirements.

why not build your 1000 avg hp dmg trap into a ______. (at first i thought glass bottle, but anything small enough to carry and throw works)

with a craft skill in the 75 - 150 range, you can spend a few weeks making your trap while visiting your wizard buddies timeless plane. i might help if your an undead...

i imagine the best build for all this is a necropoltian jumpsmith. (if using a divine base you could make the holy hand grenade of antioch )

to get back to the OP, i dont see [srd wise] much about exposives, except for going alchemical.. so that may need some work or extra books...

but to me, it looks like for a basic cost of 1 to 10 million gold, pre optimized you could explode the hell out of so stuff.

[Rymosrac]

The problem is how you determine average damage. Is that average damage per target? If not, how many targets does the "multiple target" property add? What about area effects?