Crossing every layer of Abyss [Archive] - Wizards Community

Crossing every layer of Abyss [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Tshern
06-25-07, 06:52 PM As the title says, this thread presents a possible method of crossing every layer of Abyss and better yet, it is all done in one single round. Whether or not this procedure actually works is unknown to me and that is exactly why I present this to you, my fellow optimizers.

In short, after a few minutes of discussion with a friend of mine, we found an item called the Rope of Crossing, which can be found from the Planar Handbook (page 83). It is a magical rope, which can be thrown up into the air and it suspends there automatically. When the rope is suspended, it is possible to ascend and descend it and every ten feet the character moves up or down the rope, he reaches the layer above or below (respectively) the layer he is initially on. Moreover, the rope lengthens as much as needed, depending on the number of layers of that particular plane. The item only works on the Outer Planes though.

This interesting item can be combined with another trick of theoretical optimization, the so called vacuum cannon (Link to a thread dealing with the cannon (http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-562989.html)). Essentially, it involves two Teleportations circles, a steel tube and a pump. Teleportation circles are placed on the top and bottom of the tube in question and the pump is used to get all the air out of the tube to eliminate the maximum falling speed of any object as there is no friction in a vacuum.

So now we have a character (preferably Warforged or anything that needs no air and lives forever), a Rope of Crossing and a vacuum cannon. The character is placed within the cannon before the vacuum is created and the Teleportation circles are activated and he proceeds to hurl the rope and takes a good grip. Then the vacuum cannon is activated, Time stop is cast and our bold hero starts gliding the rope and as his speed is infinite, he should reach the end of Abyss by the end of the Time stop.

Here is a short list of stuff needed and the steps one by one:
-Items needed:
-A steel tube large enough to contain the character.
-Someone able to cast two Teleportation circles.
-A pump.
-Someone who can cast Time stops and likes traveling.
-Procedure:
-Place the character within the tube.
-Prepare the Rope of Crossing.
-Create a vacuum.
-Activate the Teleportation circle.
-Cast Time stop and enjoy the ride.

What do you do when you have taken this long journey? The DM might rule that you take falling damage from the infinite amount of distance you drop. That is why Persistent Delay Death (Races of Destiny, page 165) is for, Beastland Ferocity (Planar Handbook, page 95) would be neat as well. Also, the damage can be dealt with the magnificent trick presented by the famous LordofProcrastination in his Omniscificer-thread (Link (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=546612)) and The Perpetual Damage Machine-thread (Link (http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-546613)). The trick involves a bucket of water, which is used to drown the character and his hit points immediately increase to 0, should they be negative in the first place. However, drowning a Warforged might cause troubles, so the spell Indomitability and something as simple as Feather fall might save the brave hero of ours.

This is the trick in its simplicity. However, there is at least one problem I can spot right away. If the number of layers of Abyss is truly infinite, is it possible to travel through them all with infinite time and infinite speed (or the speed of light, if you wish)? If you spot any problems, please share them in the thread so we can make this function properly.

Just a sidenote here, but Time stop might not be necessary. During the Time stop the character would at least have more time to accelerate and descend the rope, so it might or might not be added. Maybe it is merely a matter of flavor.

Constructive criticism, congratulations, general thoughts and such are more than welcome. Hopefully this small trick provided some food for thought. Here we go, lets conquer the last layer of Abyss. By the way, has it been said what is down there?

Yours truly, Tshern.
Taeldrin Laesrash
06-25-07, 08:34 PM Keep in mind that certain layers of the Abyss are blocked from contact by ordinary teleportation, mainly at the will of their demon lords.
Tshern
06-25-07, 08:41 PM Keep in mind that certain layers of the Abyss are blocked from contact by ordinary teleportation, mainly at the will of their demon lords.
That is a good point. The description of the item does not say it is a teleportation effect, though it would definitely make sense. I guess this is what you get for not knowing too much about Abyss. If using the Rope of Crossing really is a teleportation effect, would it somehow be possible to avoid the blockades of the demon lords?

Anyways, thanks for the heads up, Taeldrin!

Edit: The description states that if the plane is restricts entry via plane shift or similar effect, the item does not function. I know the entirety of Abyss is not protected like that, but some parts of it are. Now we have two interpretations, either every part of Abyss has to restrict plane shifting in order to make the item unusable or then it is enough that a small portion, maybe only a single layer, of Abyss prevents or restricts such effects. Please share your views.
psly4mne
06-26-07, 11:36 AM Wait, why would the character's speed be infinite? Why wouldn't he just accelerate at the usual 10 m/s2?
Tshern
06-26-07, 06:09 PM How about the subjective time flow caused by Time stop? That is pretty much why I added it in the first place. If that does not qualify, I have to find a new way to travel an infinite distance. Maybe an infinite Jump check or something?

This is what I thought initially, too. There are simple problems, but I just could not spot them on my own. Maybe I should just blame the fact that I wrote that at something like 3 a.m. our time and, well, everyone is blind to their own mistakes.

Thanks for your comments psly4mne and Taeldrin Laesrash. I try to come up with something to get rid of the errors you revealed to me, but EVERYONE's tips are still welcome just like comments are criticism.

Tshern.
Dead_Weasel
07-06-07, 08:25 AM Now, my grasp of theoretical physics is pretty poor, but would gravity really be enough to accelerate an object with mass past a certain point, even without air resistance? If I recall correctly, accelerating even minute masses past 2/3 of the speed of light requires an amount of energy that is, shall we say, excessive. Granted, infinite time might be enough to accomplish this, but time stop lasts for 30 seconds of effective/apparent time, maximum. How does time stop even contribute without an near-infinite number of castings?
IICV
07-06-07, 04:44 PM Granted, infinite time might be enough to accomplish this, but time stop lasts for 30 seconds of effective/apparent time, maximum. How does time stop even contribute without an near-infinite number of castings?

(I apologize for the catgirls that will die in this post)

It really depends on how you interpret Time Stop's effect; I think the interpretation the OP wanted to use was basically this:

Time Stop does not really stop time; what it does is accelerate you to the point where you can do (what seems to you) to be thirty seconds worth of stuff in what, to other people, seems to be an instant. We will call this instantaneous amount of time "epsilon", because that's the name math people use for small things.

Now, during your thirty seconds, you traverse some amount of space and do not stop at the end, because you're falling. We'll call this distance D. What everyone outside of the timestop sees, however, is you traversing D in epsilon amount of time. The formula for the velocity of an object is simple: it's just distance traveled divided by time it took to travel, or in our case D/epsilon.

It doesn't really matter what D was; all that matters is that epsilon is arbitrarily small, down to the limit of what we'd call Planck time and what D&D wizards would call Otiluke's Infinitesmial Moment or something. Because epsilon is in the denominator of the fraction, this makes your velocity explode like PhoenixInferno when exposed to a malformed CharOp post.

(Note, however, that in our world this would not give you infinite speed, just ludicrous speed. In D&D, who knows? Quantum Mechanics are probably just really tiny Modrons.)

I don't like this interpretation very much, even though it's the one in the SRD, since it also requires the Time Stop magic protect you from little things like catching on fire due to air friction from moving too fast, and keep you from shattering your bones because they can't stand the stresses from moving so fast, or all the sonic booms you'd get from every single action you take making you move faster than sound and all that, not to mention the way you get funktastic results like this one. I much prefer the Terry Pratchett or Dan Simmons ways of doing it.

Anyway, I don't know anything at all about relativity, so someone else will have to take that up. However, since the Abyss has infinite layers, I don't think that it's possible to ever reach the bottom. It's sort of like Zeno's Paradox: there will always be another layer between you and the bottom that must be traversed.
Callix
07-06-07, 10:47 PM I just love the way that if it's broken, Quantum Mechanics can fix it. Ironic, eh?

On the infinite speed problem, the power Temporal Acceleration (funtionally equivalent to Time Stop) is definitively the epsilon-time solution. However, this violates so many laws of physics that a quantum analysis makes no sense. The process of temporal acceleration has to be analysed, and then figure out how it stops working.
CrimsonDeath
07-07-07, 11:57 PM Would a pump even be able to empty our tube? It seems to me that there would always be a little air left in there, no matter how good the pump is. I'd think a specially researched destroy air spell might be a more complete solution. Alternatively, since the layers of the abyss are infinite in number, there should be layers with pretty much any imaginable combination of properties (except, perhaps, inappropriate alignments). A shortcut would be to find an airless layer and start the procedure there.
Ruri
07-10-07, 05:08 PM There are several problems with this...

You can't hit infinite speed like that. It just can't happen. Even if you weren't limited by the speed of light, your speed is still only increasing by a finite amount in every loop through the cannon... the only way you could hit an infinite speed in such a fashion is by making infinite loops, which by definition means you can never leave. At any given point in which the cannon 'fires', your speed is still finite... and any finite speed, your time stop will eventually wear off.

On top of that, once you leave the cannon, you're not in a vaccum anymore. Your speed will start to decrease towards terminal velocity (a harsh DM would start to apply damage from wind resistance here, but we'll ignore that.)

You also have to 'ascend or descend' the rope itself for it to work, not just move next to it. This almost certainly must involve touching the rope in some fashion, which will cause friction and limit your speed. This is comparatively minor, though, compared to the other issues.

Finally, even if you ignore all of these issues, you still fail. The abyss has infinite layers; even if you travel at infinite speed, you will never reach the end, because an infinite set, by definition, has no last element. There is simply no end to the abyss to reach. The entire premise of your effort is based on a misconception of how infinity works. You cannot reach the end of the abyss by any means, period, fullstop. The concept is inherently flawed.
_V_
07-10-07, 06:19 PM Finally, even if you ignore all of these issues, you still fail. The abyss has infinite layers; even if you travel at infinite speed, you will never reach the end, because an infinite set, by definition, has no last element. There is simply no end to the abyss to reach. The entire premise of your effort is based on a misconception of how infinity works. You cannot reach the end of the abyss by any means, period, fullstop. The concept is inherently flawed.
The DMG uses the words virtually endless to descibe the number of layers and says there are at least 666. So there's a chance that the actual number of layers is finite.
SoAnIs
07-11-07, 07:17 AM My musings on D&D physics (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=882569) thread got several "Physics don't apply at all in D&D" type answers. This still won't make you hit infinite speed, but you also don't need to worry about relativistic effects of your velocity (assuming the posters there are correct...)
Now, using an Arcane Nova outputting Celerity type spells WILL make you hit infinite speed, so that combined with the rope can let you visit all the layers of the abyss. (You will never run into a last layer, but with infinite speed you will still reach them all.)
BillTheManiac
07-15-07, 09:20 PM Pun-Pun .... Infinite actions per round ... Infinite layers of the Abyss ... are we done here?
Prime32
07-24-07, 04:42 PM Hmmm... I've never put much thought into Time Stop before but the only way you couldn't gain infinite speed would be if you stopped falling while in Time Stop.

...But if you stopped falling, this means Time Stop could be used to leap ridiculously wide pits...
The_Mad_Linguist
07-24-07, 06:15 PM Hmmm... I've never put much thought into Time Stop before but the only way you couldn't gain infinite speed would be if you stopped falling while in Time Stop.

...But if you stopped falling, this means Time Stop could be used to leap ridiculously wide pits...

Or you just retain your apparent speed.
BillTheManiac
07-24-07, 07:48 PM Or you just retain your apparent speed.

Time stop works exactly like it says it does. The D&D rules do not use momentum. You do not have to worry about pushing air out of your way when you teleport, which is roughly what Time Stop is. This is D&D, not Physics. The magic of Time Stop contains all the little things (air resistance, speed, falling) so that it works EXACTLY like it says it does.
Khaim
07-25-07, 04:05 PM The DMG uses the words virtually endless to descibe the number of layers and says there are at least 666. So there's a chance that the actual number of layers is finite.

Yeah, while the idea of "an infinite number of layers of hell" is a cool one, it doesn't make all that much sense once you start to really think about it. I mean, unless the average number of demons per layer is 0, then there are more demons than every other type of being put together. This could cause problems if any non-zero fraction of them ever decide to invade; they'll overrun pretty much anything.

So yeah, "very large but finite" is a much more reasonable solution, especially combined with "they don't like each other much" and "some of the layers are empty anyways".
BillTheManiac
07-25-07, 04:28 PM Yeah, while the idea of "an infinite number of layers of hell" is a cool one, it doesn't make all that much sense once you start to really think about it. I mean, unless the average number of demons per layer is 0, then there are more demons than every other type of being put together. This could cause problems if any non-zero fraction of them ever decide to invade; they'll overrun pretty much anything.

So yeah, "very large but finite" is a much more reasonable solution, especially combined with "they don't like each other much" and "some of the layers are empty anyways".

Also, if all planes are infinite, you have the Hilbert Hotel problem. Sure those infinite celestials are all used up facing the infinite fiends, but if you take away just 10% of the celestials you'd solve all of the material plane's problems AND have just as good chances against the infinite fiends.
Khaim
07-26-07, 08:54 AM Also, if all planes are infinite, you have the Hilbert Hotel problem. Sure those infinite celestials are all used up facing the infinite fiends, but if you take away just 10% of the celestials you'd solve all of the material plane's problems AND have just as good chances against the infinite fiends.

Well, until every other demon crashes the material plane as well.
BillTheManiac
07-26-07, 11:45 AM And what happens in a war between infinite demons and infinite celestials? On a finite planet?
Khaim
07-26-07, 12:23 PM And what happens in a war between infinite demons and infinite celestials? On a finite planet?

They're going to have a hard time climbing over the bodies, is what.
The_Mad_Linguist
07-26-07, 01:15 PM And what happens in a war between infinite demons and infinite celestials? On a finite planet?

The end of hunger.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Tshern 06-25-07, 06:52 PM	As the title says, this thread presents a possible method of crossing every layer of Abyss and better yet, it is all done in one single round. Whether or not this procedure actually works is unknown to me and that is exactly why I present this to you, my fellow optimizers. In short, after a few minutes of discussion with a friend of mine, we found an item called the Rope of Crossing, which can be found from the Planar Handbook (page 83). It is a magical rope, which can be thrown up into the air and it suspends there automatically. When the rope is suspended, it is possible to ascend and descend it and every ten feet the character moves up or down the rope, he reaches the layer above or below (respectively) the layer he is initially on. Moreover, the rope lengthens as much as needed, depending on the number of layers of that particular plane. The item only works on the Outer Planes though. This interesting item can be combined with another trick of theoretical optimization, the so called vacuum cannon (Link to a thread dealing with the cannon (http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-562989.html)). Essentially, it involves two Teleportations circles, a steel tube and a pump. Teleportation circles are placed on the top and bottom of the tube in question and the pump is used to get all the air out of the tube to eliminate the maximum falling speed of any object as there is no friction in a vacuum. So now we have a character (preferably Warforged or anything that needs no air and lives forever), a Rope of Crossing and a vacuum cannon. The character is placed within the cannon before the vacuum is created and the Teleportation circles are activated and he proceeds to hurl the rope and takes a good grip. Then the vacuum cannon is activated, Time stop is cast and our bold hero starts gliding the rope and as his speed is infinite, he should reach the end of Abyss by the end of the Time stop. Here is a short list of stuff needed and the steps one by one: -Items needed: -A steel tube large enough to contain the character. -Someone able to cast two Teleportation circles. -A pump. -Someone who can cast Time stops and likes traveling. -Procedure: -Place the character within the tube. -Prepare the Rope of Crossing. -Create a vacuum. -Activate the Teleportation circle. -Cast Time stop and enjoy the ride. What do you do when you have taken this long journey? The DM might rule that you take falling damage from the infinite amount of distance you drop. That is why Persistent Delay Death (Races of Destiny, page 165) is for, Beastland Ferocity (Planar Handbook, page 95) would be neat as well. Also, the damage can be dealt with the magnificent trick presented by the famous LordofProcrastination in his Omniscificer-thread (Link (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=546612)) and The Perpetual Damage Machine-thread (Link (http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-546613)). The trick involves a bucket of water, which is used to drown the character and his hit points immediately increase to 0, should they be negative in the first place. However, drowning a Warforged might cause troubles, so the spell Indomitability and something as simple as Feather fall might save the brave hero of ours. This is the trick in its simplicity. However, there is at least one problem I can spot right away. If the number of layers of Abyss is truly infinite, is it possible to travel through them all with infinite time and infinite speed (or the speed of light, if you wish)? If you spot any problems, please share them in the thread so we can make this function properly. Just a sidenote here, but Time stop might not be necessary. During the Time stop the character would at least have more time to accelerate and descend the rope, so it might or might not be added. Maybe it is merely a matter of flavor. Constructive criticism, congratulations, general thoughts and such are more than welcome. Hopefully this small trick provided some food for thought. Here we go, lets conquer the last layer of Abyss. By the way, has it been said what is down there? Yours truly, Tshern.
Taeldrin Laesrash 06-25-07, 08:34 PM	Keep in mind that certain layers of the Abyss are blocked from contact by ordinary teleportation, mainly at the will of their demon lords.
Tshern 06-25-07, 08:41 PM	Keep in mind that certain layers of the Abyss are blocked from contact by ordinary teleportation, mainly at the will of their demon lords. That is a good point. The description of the item does not say it is a teleportation effect, though it would definitely make sense. I guess this is what you get for not knowing too much about Abyss. If using the Rope of Crossing really is a teleportation effect, would it somehow be possible to avoid the blockades of the demon lords? Anyways, thanks for the heads up, Taeldrin! Edit: The description states that if the plane is restricts entry via plane shift or similar effect, the item does not function. I know the entirety of Abyss is not protected like that, but some parts of it are. Now we have two interpretations, either every part of Abyss has to restrict plane shifting in order to make the item unusable or then it is enough that a small portion, maybe only a single layer, of Abyss prevents or restricts such effects. Please share your views.
psly4mne 06-26-07, 11:36 AM	Wait, why would the character's speed be infinite? Why wouldn't he just accelerate at the usual 10 m/s2?
Tshern 06-26-07, 06:09 PM	How about the subjective time flow caused by Time stop? That is pretty much why I added it in the first place. If that does not qualify, I have to find a new way to travel an infinite distance. Maybe an infinite Jump check or something? This is what I thought initially, too. There are simple problems, but I just could not spot them on my own. Maybe I should just blame the fact that I wrote that at something like 3 a.m. our time and, well, everyone is blind to their own mistakes. Thanks for your comments psly4mne and Taeldrin Laesrash. I try to come up with something to get rid of the errors you revealed to me, but EVERYONE's tips are still welcome just like comments are criticism. Tshern.
Dead_Weasel 07-06-07, 08:25 AM	Now, my grasp of theoretical physics is pretty poor, but would gravity really be enough to accelerate an object with mass past a certain point, even without air resistance? If I recall correctly, accelerating even minute masses past 2/3 of the speed of light requires an amount of energy that is, shall we say, excessive. Granted, infinite time might be enough to accomplish this, but time stop lasts for 30 seconds of effective/apparent time, maximum. How does time stop even contribute without an near-infinite number of castings?
IICV 07-06-07, 04:44 PM	Granted, infinite time might be enough to accomplish this, but time stop lasts for 30 seconds of effective/apparent time, maximum. How does time stop even contribute without an near-infinite number of castings? (I apologize for the catgirls that will die in this post) It really depends on how you interpret Time Stop's effect; I think the interpretation the OP wanted to use was basically this: Time Stop does not really stop time; what it does is accelerate you to the point where you can do (what seems to you) to be thirty seconds worth of stuff in what, to other people, seems to be an instant. We will call this instantaneous amount of time "epsilon", because that's the name math people use for small things. Now, during your thirty seconds, you traverse some amount of space and do not stop at the end, because you're falling. We'll call this distance D. What everyone outside of the timestop sees, however, is you traversing D in epsilon amount of time. The formula for the velocity of an object is simple: it's just distance traveled divided by time it took to travel, or in our case D/epsilon. It doesn't really matter what D was; all that matters is that epsilon is arbitrarily small, down to the limit of what we'd call Planck time and what D&D wizards would call Otiluke's Infinitesmial Moment or something. Because epsilon is in the denominator of the fraction, this makes your velocity explode like PhoenixInferno when exposed to a malformed CharOp post. (Note, however, that in our world this would not give you infinite speed, just ludicrous speed. In D&D, who knows? Quantum Mechanics are probably just really tiny Modrons.) I don't like this interpretation very much, even though it's the one in the SRD, since it also requires the Time Stop magic protect you from little things like catching on fire due to air friction from moving too fast, and keep you from shattering your bones because they can't stand the stresses from moving so fast, or all the sonic booms you'd get from every single action you take making you move faster than sound and all that, not to mention the way you get funktastic results like this one. I much prefer the Terry Pratchett or Dan Simmons ways of doing it. Anyway, I don't know anything at all about relativity, so someone else will have to take that up. However, since the Abyss has infinite layers, I don't think that it's possible to ever reach the bottom. It's sort of like Zeno's Paradox: there will always be another layer between you and the bottom that must be traversed.
Callix 07-06-07, 10:47 PM	I just love the way that if it's broken, Quantum Mechanics can fix it. Ironic, eh? On the infinite speed problem, the power Temporal Acceleration (funtionally equivalent to Time Stop) is definitively the epsilon-time solution. However, this violates so many laws of physics that a quantum analysis makes no sense. The process of temporal acceleration has to be analysed, and then figure out how it stops working.
CrimsonDeath 07-07-07, 11:57 PM	Would a pump even be able to empty our tube? It seems to me that there would always be a little air left in there, no matter how good the pump is. I'd think a specially researched destroy air spell might be a more complete solution. Alternatively, since the layers of the abyss are infinite in number, there should be layers with pretty much any imaginable combination of properties (except, perhaps, inappropriate alignments). A shortcut would be to find an airless layer and start the procedure there.
Ruri 07-10-07, 05:08 PM	There are several problems with this... You can't hit infinite speed like that. It just can't happen. Even if you weren't limited by the speed of light, your speed is still only increasing by a finite amount in every loop through the cannon... the only way you could hit an infinite speed in such a fashion is by making infinite loops, which by definition means you can never leave. At any given point in which the cannon 'fires', your speed is still finite... and any finite speed, your time stop will eventually wear off. On top of that, once you leave the cannon, you're not in a vaccum anymore. Your speed will start to decrease towards terminal velocity (a harsh DM would start to apply damage from wind resistance here, but we'll ignore that.) You also have to 'ascend or descend' the rope itself for it to work, not just move next to it. This almost certainly must involve touching the rope in some fashion, which will cause friction and limit your speed. This is comparatively minor, though, compared to the other issues. Finally, even if you ignore all of these issues, you still fail. The abyss has infinite layers; even if you travel at infinite speed, you will never reach the end, because an infinite set, by definition, has no last element. There is simply no end to the abyss to reach. The entire premise of your effort is based on a misconception of how infinity works. You cannot reach the end of the abyss by any means, period, fullstop. The concept is inherently flawed.
_V_ 07-10-07, 06:19 PM	Finally, even if you ignore all of these issues, you still fail. The abyss has infinite layers; even if you travel at infinite speed, you will never reach the end, because an infinite set, by definition, has no last element. There is simply no end to the abyss to reach. The entire premise of your effort is based on a misconception of how infinity works. You cannot reach the end of the abyss by any means, period, fullstop. The concept is inherently flawed. The DMG uses the words virtually endless to descibe the number of layers and says there are at least 666. So there's a chance that the actual number of layers is finite.
SoAnIs 07-11-07, 07:17 AM	My musings on D&D physics (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=882569) thread got several "Physics don't apply at all in D&D" type answers. This still won't make you hit infinite speed, but you also don't need to worry about relativistic effects of your velocity (assuming the posters there are correct...) Now, using an Arcane Nova outputting Celerity type spells WILL make you hit infinite speed, so that combined with the rope can let you visit all the layers of the abyss. (You will never run into a last layer, but with infinite speed you will still reach them all.)
BillTheManiac 07-15-07, 09:20 PM	Pun-Pun .... Infinite actions per round ... Infinite layers of the Abyss ... are we done here?
Prime32 07-24-07, 04:42 PM	Hmmm... I've never put much thought into Time Stop before but the only way you couldn't gain infinite speed would be if you stopped falling while in Time Stop. ...But if you stopped falling, this means Time Stop could be used to leap ridiculously wide pits...
The_Mad_Linguist 07-24-07, 06:15 PM	Hmmm... I've never put much thought into Time Stop before but the only way you couldn't gain infinite speed would be if you stopped falling while in Time Stop. ...But if you stopped falling, this means Time Stop could be used to leap ridiculously wide pits... Or you just retain your apparent speed.
BillTheManiac 07-24-07, 07:48 PM	Or you just retain your apparent speed. Time stop works exactly like it says it does. The D&D rules do not use momentum. You do not have to worry about pushing air out of your way when you teleport, which is roughly what Time Stop is. This is D&D, not Physics. The magic of Time Stop contains all the little things (air resistance, speed, falling) so that it works EXACTLY like it says it does.
Khaim 07-25-07, 04:05 PM	The DMG uses the words virtually endless to descibe the number of layers and says there are at least 666. So there's a chance that the actual number of layers is finite. Yeah, while the idea of "an infinite number of layers of hell" is a cool one, it doesn't make all that much sense once you start to really think about it. I mean, unless the average number of demons per layer is 0, then there are more demons than every other type of being put together. This could cause problems if any non-zero fraction of them ever decide to invade; they'll overrun pretty much anything. So yeah, "very large but finite" is a much more reasonable solution, especially combined with "they don't like each other much" and "some of the layers are empty anyways".
BillTheManiac 07-25-07, 04:28 PM	Yeah, while the idea of "an infinite number of layers of hell" is a cool one, it doesn't make all that much sense once you start to really think about it. I mean, unless the average number of demons per layer is 0, then there are more demons than every other type of being put together. This could cause problems if any non-zero fraction of them ever decide to invade; they'll overrun pretty much anything. So yeah, "very large but finite" is a much more reasonable solution, especially combined with "they don't like each other much" and "some of the layers are empty anyways". Also, if all planes are infinite, you have the Hilbert Hotel problem. Sure those infinite celestials are all used up facing the infinite fiends, but if you take away just 10% of the celestials you'd solve all of the material plane's problems AND have just as good chances against the infinite fiends.
Khaim 07-26-07, 08:54 AM	Also, if all planes are infinite, you have the Hilbert Hotel problem. Sure those infinite celestials are all used up facing the infinite fiends, but if you take away just 10% of the celestials you'd solve all of the material plane's problems AND have just as good chances against the infinite fiends. Well, until every other demon crashes the material plane as well.
BillTheManiac 07-26-07, 11:45 AM	And what happens in a war between infinite demons and infinite celestials? On a finite planet?
Khaim 07-26-07, 12:23 PM	And what happens in a war between infinite demons and infinite celestials? On a finite planet? They're going to have a hard time climbing over the bodies, is what.
The_Mad_Linguist 07-26-07, 01:15 PM	And what happens in a war between infinite demons and infinite celestials? On a finite planet? The end of hunger.