A little stuck with my Iron Siege Challenger.

[Amechra]

I'm just gong to say, I dropped out of the competition. Just so you know.

[bearsarebrown]

I feel your pain Amechra. I want to try it too but the amount of book keeping would make an accountant blush. What was your concept?

[BruceLeeroy]

I feel your pain Amechra. I want to try it too but the amount of book keeping would make an accountant blush. What was your concept?

I'm in the same boat... interested, but without enough time. Perhaps I'll take a swing at getting a character ready over the holidays. I need to read up on the epic rules, I haven't looked at them since... who knows.

[Amechra]

I actually think I could make a character, if only as practice for my dream career as an accountant. And I'm not joking about that.

However, I've figured out a guy who could possible kill Dispater with almost no threat to himself, and that would bypass the Iron Tower completely, while I'm not even on Dis, without using Epic Spells. However, that's only a maybe;

What shuts down Dispater's Regeneration? Nothing?

Also, rulings question, only tangentially related to my idea, can you Chain Mind Rape if you have a high enough spell slot?

[bearsarebrown]

@Chain Mindrape, yes

[Tshern]

Regeneration (Ex): The Lord of the Nine is fully susceptible to attacks made by anarchic, epic, good, and silver weapons, and by spells or effects with the [Good] descriptor.

The ghost thing is new to me, before my time.

[Amechra]

My plan (please don't steal)
[spoiler]Chain Mindrape a group of 20 people to believe that their greatest love is Dispater. I will use Commoners for this purpose.
Cast an Intensified Chained Twinned Repeating Love's Pain on those people. For a moderate assumption to my CL, it would most probably be at least 70, if not more. This means that:

I take large amounts of Intelligence damage; at least 12 points, potentially more. Ouchy. However, Dispater takes 4x(420+19(210)) damage, or 17640 damage, half of which being potentially Vile Damage, across planar boundaries (spell says that distance means nothing). He gets no save, no SR, and since I'm not casting it on him, it bypasses his immunity to Mind Affecting. Dispater has 1648 HP. He's dead, Jim. And I'm pretty sure all of that stuff is from legal books. Please tell me if it isn't.

Dispater dead for the priice of 12 Intelligence damage, a 12th level slot, and a 20th level slot. It's elegant, I tell ya.[/spoiler]

Now, how do I get the spell to have the Good Descriptor? It has the Evil Descriptor, but would adding Consecrate Spell work? It would make the spell [Good] and [Evil], though...

[Tshern]

Love's pain has been discussed before.

Even if allowed, it would be stopped by the Iron curtain. Also, as a deity you are immune to ability damage, so the plan withers away.

[Amechra]

Hmmm... would I a. be capable of using Knowledge Devotion against myself. or b. get a Rank check to bypass immunities (check p. 101, bottom of Immunities section. Only iffy part is having to win a rank check against myself, but that is technically doable - I technically both win and lose if the two rank checks aren't equal.)?

Besides, Iron Curtain only has 9 uses. This would take 2 (due to Repeating or Twin) or 4 (Repeating and Twin). Either that, or the fact that it's trivial to gain more than 9 21st level spell slots...

So, in other words, Love's Pain probably isn't allowed, huh?

[Tshern]

Depends on how bad you want it to be used on you.

Also, Dispater would gain a save to negate Love's pain due to the Iron curtain. You wouldn't.

[Amechra]

Very true. I hadn't noticed that. Hmmm...

Maybe Epic spell with the Reflect Seed, to completely reflect the spell back?

I think I know my profile: Evil... and Love. And I'm a greater Deity, so I would sense anything my friend Dispater was trying to do 18 weeks in the future. Lucky me. (Just going to say that this is an inherent part of being a deity, and could be my reason for wanting to off Dispater. Plus, the though of being an Evil Love god is hilarious. Of course, I won't know what Dispater's up to... but since there is a massive upsurge of love in Dis, of all places, I'll figure it out.[/b])

You know, the planning is actually quite fun. It's like playing chess, but on steroids.

[Nytemare3701]

Depends on how bad you want it to be used on you.

Also, Dispater would gain a save to negate Love's pain due to the Iron curtain. You wouldn't.

So doesn't the Iron Siege essentially break down to:

"Dispater does it to you first, AND he has a fancy plane."?

[Tshern]

Not really, that is why Love's pain is not a part of the challenge.

[Bauglir]

Generally, if it's a tactic based on 1 or 2 spells in conjunction, then it is reasonable to expect Dispater to have a counter or to have used it first on anybody who uses it against him. Actually, it is likely that any purely mechanical offense will be countered; the exception being Epic Spells, because you can make your own. Defenses are not countered so much, though, because there are far more "You are plain immune" defenses that the challenger can pick up than there are "You just plain win" offenses. Still, extramechanical thinking is they key here; your abilities are just tools to accomplishing a plan that can actually win here, they aren't the plan itself, in all likelihood.

[Amechra]

Gotta keep trying...

Wait, we can choose to be any deity or deities, as long as we fit the requirements?

I choose to be Dispater. I commit suicide. I win.

[BeholderSlayer]

Gotta keep trying...

Wait, we can choose to be any deity or deities, as long as we fit the requirements?

I choose to be Dispater. I commit suicide. I win.

You get a contigency that goes off that raises you (whatever that one is that raises outsiders too). You lose!

[The_Mad_Linguist]

I already tried that once.

[Amechra]

Gotta keep trying...

Wait, we can choose to be any deity or deities, as long as we fit the requirements?

I choose to be Dispater. I commit suicide. I win.

You get a contigency that goes off that raises you (whatever that one is that raises outsiders too). You lose!

Then I keep trying!

Besides, all it said is that we have to kill Dispater, not kill him permanently.

I already tried that once.

Can I see the transcript of this, please?

[Amechra]

An idea... make your Artifact as close to an Acorn of Far Travel as you can, except it has a radius. As big a radius as you can. Preferably have it create two overlapping radii, one far larger than the other.

Why do this? Make the artifact make the surrounding area have the traits of your Divine Realm, but still count as being on whatever Plane your on, and now you have a +8 to your Rank check if he tries to affect your area...

Affecting you affects the area, as it would move it. Start making Rank checks to make Dis Dead Magic, and have Initiate of Mystra...

Preferably, have the secondary radius count as a neutral plane.


Alright, now here is an important question: If Dispater was on on Dis, and on one side of a portal that leads off the Plane, and he rolled a Rank check vs. someone on the other side, would he be counted as DvR 18 or DvR 15?

Alternatively, camp out, and bring him to you through the locked gate thingy... He counts as DvR 15 when used w/ that, ya know.

[Daniel678]

I don't think turning the plane into a dead magic plane would help that much. Deities and artifacts are immune to antimagic fields and (I think) areas of dead magic. That's why nobody has Initiate of Mystra.

You cannot use the Circle of Locking the Nine Gates on Dispater unless you first modify it to both pull him to an outer plane adjacent to Dis. You need to do this because the spell says that it pulls him to the mortal realm except links to the astral plane are off in Dis so that nothing can travel through the astral from dis to the mortal realm. As CoLtNG is a summoning spell it probably uses the astral by default.
I personally think that first summoning him to gather information/weaken him is one of the better strategies.

I think you might be placing too much focus on rank checks. There are only a handful of abilities that use them and most of them (immunities, wish, etc) can be replaced with versions that don't require a rank check. There are also some abilities that can be spammed so it doesn't really matter if you loose 80% of the rank checks since you will eventually do what you want.