Max dice rolled at one time...

[JaronK]

Locate City Bomb clearly wins.  Miles in D&D are abstracted to 6kfeet (IIRC), and the spell can easily knock someone 240 miles.  Since they take 1d6 damage per 5' traveled, that's 288000dg damage to anyone right next to you at time of casting... and it hits everyone else in that radius as well.

JaronK

[Shinzen]

Locate City Bomb clearly wins.  Miles in D&D are abstracted to 6kfeet (IIRC), and the spell can easily knock someone 240 miles.  Since they take 1d6 damage per 5' traveled, that's 288000dg damage to anyone right next to you at time of casting... and it hits everyone else in that radius as well.

JaronK

I thought the Locate City Bomb didn't actually work by RAW?

[JaronK]

It depends on how you read it.  It says it's a circle (which means everyone would just hop up 5' and be quite startled, but only the weakest would die), but it also talks about finding underground cities so clearly it's a circle in all directions from the caster (which is to say a sphere).  As a sphere it works fine.  Both of those are RAW, so it depends on which part you care about more.

Either way, seriously TO.

JaronK

[Lycanthromancer]

Plain wizard with a raven familiar would do it.

Use Shrink Item on some granite boulders, use the same command word for all of them, and pack them up in a crate that (post Shrinkage) weighs 375 lbs. Use an Empowered Telekinesis to thrust the crate at your foe, and have your familiar ready the command word to all of them to blow them up as they hit your enemy.

375 lbs of shrunken boulders = 1,500,000 lbs of unshrunken boulders, meaning that it deals (according to the text of Telekinesis) 60,000d6 points of bludgeoning damage. Empowered gives you 90,000d6 damage.

[EjoThims]

First link in my sig has to roll many dice.

[Lycanthromancer]

Okay. A wizard takes a MASSIVE tarpaulin and takes it into a 0g, where there is no gravity. Since the tarp now weighs nothing, it's now a proper target for the BIGGEST EXPLOSIVE RUNE EVER.

Now ensure that it's metamagicked with Explosive Spell, and drape it over the surface of the moon.

Since the area of Explosive Runes is limited only to how far it can be read from (plus a few feet for those too far away to read them), the first person that reads the moon rune sets it off, causing everything on the planet to be blasted into space for hundreds of thousands of miles (until it's effectively too far away to read).

How many d6's is that, again?

[SneeR]

Okay. A wizard takes a MASSIVE tarpaulin and takes it into a 0g, where there is no gravity. Since the tarp now weighs nothing, it's now a proper target for the BIGGEST EXPLOSIVE RUNE EVER.

Now ensure that it's metamagicked with Explosive Spell, and drape it over the surface of the moon.

Since the area of Explosive Runes is limited only to how far it can be read from (plus a few feet for those too far away to read them), the first person that reads the moon rune sets it off, causing everything on the planet to be blasted into space for hundreds of thousands of miles (until it's effectively too far away to read).

How many d6's is that, again?

Technically, only 6d6... Size doesn't matter.

[snakeman830]

Okay. A wizard takes a MASSIVE tarpaulin and takes it into a 0g, where there is no gravity. Since the tarp now weighs nothing, it's now a proper target for the BIGGEST EXPLOSIVE RUNE EVER.

Now ensure that it's metamagicked with Explosive Spell, and drape it over the surface of the moon.

Since the area of Explosive Runes is limited only to how far it can be read from (plus a few feet for those too far away to read them), the first person that reads the moon rune sets it off, causing everything on the planet to be blasted into space for hundreds of thousands of miles (until it's effectively too far away to read).

How many d6's is that, again?

Technically, only 6d6... Size doesn't matter.

Explosive Spell kicks in, though.

[X-Codes]

It depends on how you read it.  It says it's a circle (which means everyone would just hop up 5' and be quite startled, but only the weakest would die), but it also talks about finding underground cities so clearly it's a circle in all directions from the caster (which is to say a sphere).  As a sphere it works fine.  Both of those are RAW, so it depends on which part you care about more.

Either way, seriously TO.

JaronK

...

Explosive Spell can be applied only to spells that allow Reflex saves and

First off, Locate City doesn't even have a saving throw entry.  It's not even "Saving Throw: No."  That by itself disqualifies it from being usable with Explosive spell.  The fact that Locate City may or may not qualify as a burst according to the poorly-defined terms of what a burst is doesn't matter.

[Lycanthromancer]

It depends on how you read it.  It says it's a circle (which means everyone would just hop up 5' and be quite startled, but only the weakest would die), but it also talks about finding underground cities so clearly it's a circle in all directions from the caster (which is to say a sphere).  As a sphere it works fine.  Both of those are RAW, so it depends on which part you care about more.

Either way, seriously TO.

JaronK

...

Explosive Spell can be applied only to spells that allow Reflex saves and

First off, Locate City doesn't even have a saving throw entry.  It's not even "Saving Throw: No."  That by itself disqualifies it from being usable with Explosive spell.  The fact that Locate City may or may not qualify as a burst according to the poorly-defined terms of what a burst is doesn't matter.

Note that other feats applied to it DO give it a saving throw.

[JaronK]

First off, Locate City doesn't even have a saving throw entry.  It's not even "Saving Throw: No."  That by itself disqualifies it from being usable with Explosive spell.  The fact that Locate City may or may not qualify as a burst according to the poorly-defined terms of what a burst is doesn't matter.

I take it you're not familiar with the Locate City Bomb.

The concept is that you use Snowcasting to make it a [cold] spell.  Then use Flash Frost spell so it does 2 damage to everyone in the area.  Now use Energy Substitution followed by Born of Three Thunders to give it a Reflex Save.  

Now it's got a reflex save and does damage.  NOW you can apply Explosive Spell.  And there goes the neighborhood.

JaronK

[X-Codes]

Source for the Flash Frost spell?

[snakeman830]

Source for the Flash Frost spell?

Either Frostburn or PHB2.  Not sure which, but either way, the trick does work to apply Explosive Spell to any area spell.

Explosive Detect Magic is hilarious

[X-Codes]

Well, you can't do that with a prepared spell slot.  Snowcasting only applies at casting, so you can't prepare it with any of those metamagic feats because it's not a [cold] spell yet.  Sorcerers might be able to do it because there's no established priority as to whether the Snowcasting or metamagics come first, but I'm skeptical about the ability for them to pull it off because of the action mandates put on by the Snowcasting feat and metamagic + spontaneous casting in general.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

PBMC charging build has lots.

I'm remembered

Mine is max damage for brute force style 'i run and hit a few times' sort of shtick. Obviously its a more legit method that shouldn't be compared to the 'trick' builds such as locate city nuke or PrC CL recombinations. Oddly enough due to the crit multipliers it is probably the build with the least die rolling (for the scale of its attack damage). But if your DM is okay with you rolling 12 and 16 thousand d8's, you can still manage to surprise him in terms of raw damage if you forget to tell him about the x11 multiplier...