Destroying the world as we know it, a Handbook

Righto, what I'm going to be trying to attempt here is a compilation of all the various ways of
destroying world, as well as possibly one or two neato ways of conquering it that involves large
amounts of collateral damage. While I am sure that there are many methods that I will miss,
hopefully this will be a good starting point, and people can suggest more, which I will then add.

For the purposes of this guide, rendering the world as uninhabitable to most life, or at least
terrestrial humanoid life, counts as destroying it. I will be assuming a standard earthlike world,
though variations on this are of course possible.

As such:
Radius of world = 20 925 525 feet

Please note that math is not my strong point so I may have gotten some calculations wrong,
please point out any mistakes you find.

Lowest Level Destroying the World Methods:

Method #19:
ECL = 1
Level 1 Dragonfire Adept with the Enlarge Breath Feat.

Method #3:
ECL = 1
Adventurer acquires brown mold in dungeon. Adventurer travel to nearest volcano, adventurer throws
in brown mold. Brownsplosion!

Method #20:
ECL = 1
Level 1 Chicken Infested Commoner summons infinite chickens. World destroyed in chicken singularity.

Method #1: Epic magic

Spoiler
The Premise:

Not surprisingly(since epic magic is epic broken) it is perfectly possibly to destroy the world
with epic spells, if you can pump your spellcraft high enough or get enough mitigating factors.

Note: I am using the example epic spells to determine how certain Factors should be applied,
however please tell me if I'm doing something wrong.
Example Spell:

Destroy the World

Spellcraft DC: Negative something
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 2 rounds
Range: 1 212 228 000 ft.
Target: 20 925 540-ft radius sphere of nonliving matter or one creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude half
Spell Resistance: Yes
To Develop: Negative something gold and time to develop Seed: Destroy(DC 29) Factors:
change area to 20-ft. radius(+2 DC), increase radius to 20 925 525-ft.(+4 185 104 DC), increase
range to 1 212 228 000 ft.(+202 036 DC), decrease casting time to 2 rounds(+16 DC) Mitigating
factors: decrease damage die by two steps(-10 DC), 7 additional spellcasters contributing epic
spell slots(-133 DC), burn 20,000 XP per epic spellcaster(-1600 DC), 88 000 additional
spellcasters contributing 1st-level spell slots(-88 000 DC), burn 1000 XP per 2nd-level
spellcaster(-80 000 DC), 6000 additional spellcasters contributing 2nd-level spell slots(-18 000
DC), burn 3000 XP per 3rd-level spellcaster(-120 000 DC), burn 6000 XP per 4th-level
spellcaster(-120 000 DC), 1600 additional spellcasters contributing 3rd-level spell slots(-8 000
DC), burn 10 000 XP per 5th-level spellcaster(-104 000 DC), Burn 15 000 XP per 6th-level
spellcaster(-84 000 DC), 480 additional spellcasters contributing 4th-Level spell slots(-3360
DC), burn 20,000 XP per 7th-level spellcaster(-64 000 DC), burn 20,000 XP per 8th-level
spellcaster(-32 000 DC), 80 additional spellcasters contributing 5th-level spell slots(-720 DC),
burn 20 000 XP per 9nth-level spellcaster(-16 000 DC), deal 60d6 backlash damage to each
participant in the ritual(-5 769 600 DC)

This spell deals 20d4 points of damage to the target. The damage is of no particular type or
energy. If the target is reduced to -10 hit points or less (or a construct, object, or undead is
reduced to 0 hit points), it is utterly destroyed as if disintegrated, leaving behind only a trace of
fine dust. Up to a 20 925 540-foot sphere of nonliving matter is automatically disintegrated. This
spells affects even magical matter, energy fields, and force effects that are normally only affected
by the disintegrate spell. Such effects are automatically destroyed. Epic spells using the ward
seed may also be destroyed, though the caster must succeed at an opposed caster level check
against the other spellcaster to bring down a ward spell.

Possible scenario:

A cabal of 4 omnicidal lunar Demiliches and their 4 lich cohorts develop a epic spell to reduce
the world to dust. The Demiliches each rule a kingdom on the moon. All four of them are level
30 wizards with their cohorts ranging from levels 25 to 29. Each demilich has the leadership,
epic leadership, legendary commander, extra followers, necrotic reserve and epic spellcasting
feats. Each has a leadership score of about 40 or more.

They assemble their roughly 1 million assorted followers, all of which are casters of have been
psychically reformed to be casters. All of the followers are tied to wooden poles so that they will
remain standing as if casting even if they die. The ritual leader dons the most powerful magical
items in the possession of the cabal, the Rhapsody of Pain. The ritual begins, and each of
participants gives a spell slot to the ritual leader, large parts of their life experience is also burned
up to fuel the spell, all are then wracked by a terrible backlash, receiving 60d6 damage. Many
die, possibly even some of the cohort liches, however since they wee all tied to poles so that they
remain standing as if casting, and the backlash does not count as a attack, they still contribute to
the ritual. The ritual leader gains large bonuses thanks to the damage he has inflicted upon
himself and upon the other participants. The second round begins and the ritual leader easily
completes the spell, thanks to the various sacrifices made and bonuses received. All the
participants once again take damage, with only the demiliches and some of the cohorts surviving.
The demiliches survive thanks to their necrotic reserve The world which the moon once orbited
is completely annihilated. The dead liches reappear 1d10 days later thanks to their phylactery's.
All live creatures that once lived on the world soon die thanks to exposure to vacuum, only some
undead, constructs and the strongest of the living surviving, but unless they have some sort of
teleportation magic they're just going to be drifting through the void.

Further Notes:

This spell will possibly only destroy half of the world per casting, due to the fact that it hits on
the surface of the world and the radius then only goes in about halfway into the world. To
counteract this use the reveal seed to create a sensor in the middle of the earth through which you
then cast Destroy the World.

If you want you could take the Might makes Right feat, the Cancer Mage prestige class, contract
the appropriate disease and gain NI followers, while you're at it throw in the transport seed in the
spell and take out large chunks of the multiverse at a time, though this may require ad hoc dc
increases, consult your DM.

There is also some contention about whether participants who are killed during the spell still
contribute, which is why this is just a example spell.

Alternate methods:

If you want to ditch the million sacrifices the above spell requires you could create a less
powerful version of Destroy the World and destroy the worlds in smaller chunks at a time, like
say a tenth at a time or whatever. Or you could use the omniscifer infinite loop to gain infinite
spellcaft ranks. Or just gate in infinite solars.

There are of course other ways to destroy the world with epic spells, I only showed the most
obvious.

Method #2: Global Flooding

Spoiler
The Premise:

The Decanter of Endless Water. While this may look like a useful but relatively harmless item at
first, if one thinks about the long term, one will realize that even a single Decanter of Endless
Water set to Geyser and left unattended, could eventually inundate the entire world. As such if
one were to intentionally scatter decanters throughout the world and protect them against
divinations to prevent those pesky heroes from locating them, one could much more rapidly
bring about the Drowning of the world.

According to some possibly bull**** figures I acquired from the internets, one would need at
least 5*10^20 gallons of water to flood most of the earth(the highest mountain peaks would still
possibly stick out). A Decanter of Endless Water can provide up to 30 gallons of water every 6
seconds. This translates to 5Gal/s. As such it would require about 3*10^12 years for a single
decanter to flood the world, or 3 000 000 000 millennia, as such it would take effectively forever
for a single decanter accidentally left set to Geyser to flood the world. For the purposes of this
handbook a reasonable timeframe for world destruction will be no longer than 10 millennia. As
such roughly 300 000 000 Decanters of Endless Water would be required to flood the world
within a reasonable timeframe.

Please note that most of the last math in the last paragraph are only rough estimates, I didn't want
to type a lot of fractions. How would one go about acquiring such a arbitrarily large amount of
magical items? The most obvious method would be through infinite wish loops, though various
methods of avoiding paying xp costs could also allow them to be crafted in combination with
various crafting feats and items to reduce gp costs and crafting time.

The process of global flooding can also be helped along by melting the polar ice caps, which can
be done through a variety of means, the most obvious of which is permanced walls of fire.

Possible Scenario:

The Aboleths have been saving up Aboleth Mucus for a century or so and now have extremely
large stockpiles, large enough to flood entire caverns of the underdark. They then proceed to do
just that, flooding the caverns containing the cities of their greatest rivals, the illithids and the
drow. Most illithid and drow cities are completely decimated, the inhabitants suffocating to
death. Those few who survive and those cities that were not flooded are quickly assaulted by the
combined might of the entire Aboleth civilization, the remaining species of both races becoming
loyal slaves to their aboleth masters thanks to the Aboleth enslave ability. With their place as
undisputed masters of the Underdark now established, the Aboleth turn their malevont gazes to
the horridly dry surface world.
They come up with a plan, a plan so bogglingly long term that only a Aboleth mind could have
come up with it. Phychically reforming any suitably powerful slaves into dedicated crafters, they
then cast Eternity of Torture on some of the less powerful slaves, and attach Pain Extractors to
them. With a endless supply of liquid pain now established, the Abloleths start to mass produce
Decanters of Endless Water, making hundreds or possibly even thousands of Decanters per year.
After about a century of dedicated production they start emplacing these bottles on the seafloor
of the oceans of the world, especially in the various deep sea trenches, protecting them from
divination through permenanced Mage's Private Sanctums. All the decanters are of course set to
Geyser.

The Aboleths continue production and continue emplacing Decanters in various locations
throughout the world. The terrestrial civilizations of the world eventually start noticing a rise in
sea levels and start to investigate, but all they discover are bizarre reports that the Underdark has
been completely flooded. Any investigators who get close to the truth are enslaved by the
aboleths and set to producing even more decanters.

Meanwhile those Aboleths not involved in the Decanter Project have been busy conquering and
enslaving the other aquatic races of the world, bringing them into the Aboleth fold and adding
more crafters to help with the Decanter Project. Certain of these new slaves were however
utilized to maintain a image of normalcy underwater, fooling the surfacers about the true state of
underwater matters.

This all continues for another few decades, with the surface civilizations becoming more and
more frantic, until the coastal civilizations eventually start devoting the majority of their
resources to the dilemma facing them. By now great batteries of decanters have been set up
underwater. Before the surface civilizations discover the entirety of the disaster facing them,
undercover Aboleth slaves infiltrate the surface world and emplace batteries of up to a hundred
decanters in many of the major cities of the surface world. One fateful day they are all activate.
Cities for the most part being built in low depressions in the land surrounding rivers, many of
them are quickly flooded, killing many and causing much disruption. The surfacers now know
that what they face is not just a natural phenomenon however but another group bent on their
destruction. They soon discover the scale of the problem facing them launch a desperate attack
against the Aboleths. This large fails however, as the largest part of the Aboleth empire is
underwater, and most surface polities are simply not equipped for large scale aquatic military
campaigns, and their aquatic allies are already subsumed into the Aboleth empire. The
counterattack for the most part fails miserably.

It is at this point that the Aboleths start creating permanenced walls of fire at the polar ice caps,
speeding up the flooding progress greatly. More and more decanters are being installed and the
surfacers seem helpless to stop the rising tide.

Another decade passes, the sea level is rising by roughly a meter per year now, more decanters
having little addition effect on how long it would take to flood the world. Many of the lower
lying coastal kingdoms have been completely flooded. Some of the higher lying kingdoms who
had been blissfully ignorant of the danger facing them suddenly become very much aware of
their approaching doom. But by now it is too late to stop the tide. Too many decanters have been
made. To find and deactivate them all would be a almost impossible task without inside
knowledge of their placement and a easy means to reach them. All the rulers of the surface world
could do was watch their kingdoms being covered by a sea of neverending water.

Eventually all the world is underwater and the Aboleths reign supreme once more, most of the
decanters are deactivated, and stored away, in case they may ever be needed again. Airbreathing
races not adapted by their tentacled masters to serve their watery needs are but a memory, and
the world is once more as it was and should be.

Method #3: The Oozening

The Premise:

The Venom Ooze from Drow of the Underdark has a nifty extraordinary ability called corrupt
water, which makes 10 cubic feet of water in a body of water still, foul, poisonous and unable to
support animal life for each hour that the Venom Ooze is submerged in the aforementioned body
of water.
The world oceans consist of roughly 4.5*10^19 cubic feet of water. As such it would take a
single ooze roughly 5*10^14 years to corrupt all of the water in the oceans. Since we want to do
it much faster, we want a lot more Venom Oozes. The easiest and simplest way to acquire
Venom Oozes would be to set up some resetting Clone and Polymorph Any Object traps, cloning
the the oozes and then polymorphing them into live versions of themselves. Throw the multitude
of oozes you should end up with in the world's various oceans and wait. Eventually the oceans
will end up foul and lifeless, and large portions of life on the planet will soon die out without the
lifegiving oceans to support them. Works well in conjunction with flooding the entire world. Add
in some castings of the Befoul spell for extra fun and speeding it up a bit.

OR

Take a brown mold. Give it the cold subtype somehow, possibly through one of the rituals in SS,
or make it immune to cold in some other way(This step isn't stricly necessary, more of a means
of increasing the change of success). It may be necessary to awaken the slime first(Unsure if you
can give the cold subtype to a nonintelligent inanimate being). Expose the slime to some
permanent source of flame, watch as it continually doubles in size until it eventually covers the
entire world. A permenanced wall of fire would be ideal.

Possible scenario:

Cult of jellies, oozes and slimes who worship Juiblex set out to destroy the world. The cult
leaders are a awakenened Gelatinous Cube, a Sentry Living Disjunction Spell Ooze wearing a
Headband of Intellect, a Reason Stealer, a Assassin Jelly and a Summoning Ooze.

The cult wishes to engulf the world in a tide of slime, and as such they begin to gather all the
Venom Oozes and Brown Molds they can find. Eventually they build some traps of Cloning and
Polymorph Any Object, churning out a multitude of Venom Oozes. They start dropping these
into the world's oceans and then turn their attention to the Brown Mold. The Cult uses a Ritual of
the Elements to give the Brown Mold the Cold Subtype, making it immune to cold, its only
weakness. They then leave it in a cavern with with a permanenced Wall of Fire. They repeat this
with all of the Brown Mold, leaving some in shaded places on the surface.

The world never knew what hit it, as it was suddenly engulfed in a wave of brown mold, while
the oceans were becoming foul and lifeless.
Alternate methods:

Or you could do this(Though Gate and some buffs like Iron Body and Energy Immunity would
probably work just as well):

Quote:

Journey to the Center of the Earth

[Divination] [Conjuration]
Spellcraft DC: 58
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Radius: 70 ft. radius
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Reflex half
Power Resistance: Yes
To Develop: 522,000 gp; 11 days; 20,880 XP. Seeds: transport (DC 27), foresee (DC 17), reveal
(DC 19), conceal (DC 17). Factors: unwilling target (+4 DC), change from touch to target (+4
DC). Mitigating Factors: 3 casters contribute 1,000 XP (-30 DC).

Journey to the center of the earth, when successfully cast, sends the unwilling target of the spell
to the center of the planet, using the foresee and reveal seeds in order to guarantee a sufficiently
accurate description of the destination for the spell in its entirety to work.

Here’s the second epic spell you need to do it:

Antigaea
[Transmutation]
Spellcraft DC: 48
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: 300 ft.
Duration: Permanent
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
To Develop: 432,000 gp; 9 days; 17,280 XP. Seed: transform (DC 21), transform (DC 21).
Factors: increase size by 1 size category (+6 DC), make immune to pressure damage as an
exceptional quality (+10 DC) cast 40 levels higher for the purposes of avoiding dispelling (+80
DC). Mitigating Factors: 6 casters contribute one 8th level spell slot (-90 DC).

Antigaea, when cast upon a creature, has two effects upon them. First, it makes them one size
category larger. In the case of the life form upon which antigaea is cast, it turns a small, 5 foot in
diameter sample of brown mold into a cube of brown mold five feet across in all dimensions.
Secondly, it makes the mold created completely immune to pressure damage. Antigaea is also
cast 40 levels higher for the purposes of avoiding dispelling.
Here’s how the strategy works.

Journey to the Center of the Earth transports the modified brown mold, now immune to pressure
damage-and hence, cannot be killed by intense pressure, to the center of the planet. Every round
that the modified brown mold takes 2d6 points of fire damage (in fact, it’d do a lot more than
that), it doubles in size. However, being incompressible, while the matter surrounding it by
definition, is not, the matter surrounding it must be displaced. Eventually so much of this
displacement will take place as the mold grows in size in the core of the planet that it will start
disrupting the structure of the planet itself, causing it to tear itself apart.

Or, assuming total planetary destruction will occur once the brown mold takes up an equivalent
amount of space as the core and mantle itself-at which point the mold itself dies from the cold of
space, leaving nothing but fragments of the planet itself floating around, this is how long it
would take:

37,212,583,598,326,934,016 cubic feet. (Total volume of core and mantle)

125 cubic feet. (volume of initial sample of modified brown mold).

The brown mold is assumed to double every round it takes at least 2d6 points of fire damage, so:

37,212,583,598,326,934,016 = 125 x 2^n

Solving this equation gives 58.04664008 divisions (rounding up to 59 divisions). Since a round
represents 6 seconds, from total casting, this gives 348 seconds, or rather, 5 minutes and 58
seconds for the specially adapted mold to grow-although utter devastation should occur much
sooner than that due to phenomena such as shock waves arising from the center of the planet
upwards.

Method #4: The Ultimate Hurl

The Premise:

A suitably optimised Hulking Hurler could hurl a sufficiently large asteroid or even the moon directly at
the world, devastating all life on it. Heck a sufficiently cheesy Hulking Hurler can hurl the world into the
sun. One easy way to accomplish this is via taking levels in the Cancer Mage prestige class and
contracting the Festering Anger disease for NI strength which will allow you to throw pretty much
anything.

Possible Scenario:

A Half-Ogre Cancer Mage Hulking Hurler becomes enraged because none of da pretty wimmens want to
sleep with a disease ridden abomination of nature like him. Goaded beyond his ability to control his own
actions, he throws the moon into the planet. When he realises that this has completely elimnated his
chances of sleeping with any pretty wimmens he becomes further incensed and throws the entire planet
into the sun. Then he drifts aimlessly in the world, playing billiards with some asteroids.

Method #5: Ice Age time

Spoiler
The Premise:

The DMG II introduces the very neat concept of Magical Rituals, and provides a ritual that can
potentially entomb the entire world in endless cold. Its name? Killing Frost of Ghulurak(DMG II
pg.115). This neat ritual has a 10 mile deep ring of 10-20 Fahrenheit cold along the outer edge, a
middle ring of -20 Fahrenheit cold that grows by 1 mile radius per week and a innermost heart of
cold of 1 radius that is -60 Fahrenheit. After the statue has been in place for a century the
innermost cold area also starts to grow at a mile radius per month.

The circumference of the earth though the poles is roughly 24,860 miles. As such, if you do the
ritual at each of the poles, each Killing Frost only needs to cover a 12,430 mile radius circle. The
reason we're doing it at the poles is because this way it will take longer for the residents of the
world to notice what is going on, and by the time they do it will be to late, with the residents of
the polar regions already having fallen under the sway of Ghulurak(Did I mention that it also
mind controls creatures that get to close? Yeah). The killing frost grows by 52 miles per year for
the first century. And then by 64 miles per year after that. So that's a 5211 mile radius size after
the first century, leaving 7219 miles to be covered in the following years. Assuming two killing
frosts were made, it would take around 213 years for them to affect the entire planet.

Possible Scenario:

Two groups of Frost Mages, each living at one of the two poles, are competing fiercely against
each other to be the undisputed masters of cold magic. They are called the Northies and the
Southies. In they're struggle for magical supremacy they each delve into forbidden ice lore.
While studying Ghulurak they roll higher than 50 on their knowledge(history) checks and fail
their will saves. The frost mages are then compelled to complete the ritual to summon the Killing
Frost of Ghulurak. Thanks to the magical wards and protections surrounding their sanctums, no
one in the outside world realises what has happened, until it is far too late.
After a few years pass, people start noticing that the polar regions are expanding, outward,
encroaching on the rest of the world. Eventually the entire world is covered in ice.

Alternate methods:

A couple of casting of the epic spell Ice Age should have much the same effect. Add in some
generous helping of the spell Flash-Freeze for good measure.

You could always obtain some body parts of the Xixecal abomination and use the clone+PaO
trick to obtain a veritable army of them. Besides the benefits of having a army of epic-level
monsters, there's also the facts that they cloak a good chunk of space around them in a permanent
Dire Winter effect.

Or you could do something like this

A Fun way to say "Fuck You"

« on: November 02, 2010, 12:25:34 PM »

A nice way to do this is a Wizard 5/Red Wizard 5/Incantatrix 10

"I'm terribly sorry for what I'm about to do..."

Spells: Fimbulwinter

Metamagic: Fell Drain, Extend Spell, Flash Frost Spell, Energy Substitution (Cold), and Lord of
the Uttercold

Metamagic Reducer: Arcane Thesis (Fimbulwinter).

Maximize Spell and Empower Spell are gained from Circle Magic

Fimbulwinter (8)+Fell Drain (+2-1-1)+Flash Frost Spell (+1-1)+Extend Spell (+1-1)+Lord of the
Uttercold (+0)

Energy Substitution (Cold) is required for Lord of the Uttercold.

Make sure you've raised your CL to 40.

Wait until winter. Cast Frostfell to drop the temperature so that it's a cold climate, for a +10 to
your d20 roll for the effects of Fimbulwinter.

Cast Fimbulwinter. You might want Spell Thematics to make this even more epic. Maybe have it
look like a wolf is eating the sun, or some such.

10 minutes later, an area 40 miles in radius, up to 20 miles away from where you cast this, is in
the depth of winter.

But this winter is different... for one thing, it will last for at least 100 weeks, or up to 144 weeks
at most. For the people that don't want to do the math, that's a span from a little less than 2 years
to a bit less than 3 years.

For another, its cold is infused with the deadly embrace of the Negative Energy plane. Every six
seconds, regardless of the actual conditions within the circle, everything takes 8 cold damage and
8 negative energy damage. And everything damaged gets dealt a negative level. Wights begin to
rise within a day of the start of this storm.

And the winter's conditions themselves are a horror. The depth of the snow can range from 9
inches to 10 feet of snow. And the winds...

Well they can be anywhere from 11+ to 31+ miles per hour.

I'm actually planning for something like this happening to a populous city in the history of my
campaign world. A city of culture is destroyed within days, while hordes of wights roam through
the area and into the countryside itself. And even a minute or two of exposure without adequate
protection can result in another wight joining those numbers...

Of course, as of the present, this happened a century ago. But they're still hunting the wights...

But, yeah, find a way to make this immune to dispelling, and I would say this is worse than the
locate city bomb and AftS. Because they don't last as long, and don't have the horrible effect of
forcing the survivors to watch their loved ones, children and the elderly first, die from the
supernatural cold, and knowing from the icy feel of the drain inside your chest that you would be
next...

And there is the horror of effectively making that 40 mile radius almost completely unclaimable;
an explorer would probably see it as merely being a field of winter, and even if he was 20th level
(probably a monk,from the lack of paranoia and foresight necessary), he would die after a mere
600 feet of travel.

Drop this on a major trade route, and watch as wars break out...

Method #6: Summon a Elder Evil

The Premise

From the book of the same name these babies are specifically designed to pretty much break
settings if they're not stopped. It's mostly they're signs that do the most damage, which is rather
ironic since the signs are apparently sent by the gods to warn of the coming of the Elder Evils.
From Father Llymic who completely blots out the sun, to Pandorym who would obliterate all
deities.

With enough knowledge checks and divination spells a character could learn enough about a
Elder Evil to determine how they could unleash them on the planet. For example finding the
location of Father Llymic's prison or learning how to lead Ragnorra to the world.

Possible Scenario:

The Society of Malshapers guides Ragnorra so that she comes to the specified world and crashes
into it, transforming all who live on it into horrible abominations and aberrations.
Alternate methods:

Technically you could use the gate spell to summon one of the Elder Evils. Or you could design
a epic spell using the Summon seed.

Method #7: Apocalypse from the Sky

The Premise

So, the ultimate non-epic destroy everything spell(LCB doesn't work). Apocalypse from the Sky is a
Corrupt spell from the BoVD, page 85. While very powerful it requires a artifact as a material component
and damages your abilities. At level 20 this effects a nice 200 mile wide circle. Throw in some metamagic
like widen spell, empower spell, maximize spell, explosive spell, energy admixture and twin spell. Use
and abuse Sanctum spell and arcane thesis to lower spell level. Use some of the various method
available to to raise CL to make the area effected even larger. This includes using liquid agony as a
additional component(+2), the orange prism ioun stone(+1), ring of arcane might(+1), terran brandy(+2),
etc. Just these few examples will add another 60 miles to the spell.

Cast this spell enough times and it is very possible to devastate the entire planet. How to get around
that annoying material component cost of a artifact however, not to mention the corruption cost and
the fact that you are also effected by the spell? The ability damage is easily taking care of by a Orb of
Mental Renewal(Mic), or you could bind Naberius. As to the artifact, technically artifacts don't have a
value, so eschew material should work. If you want a less cheesy solution however, the Phaerimm(Lost
Empires of Faerun pg.187) can cast spells without any material components and I think Shadowcasters
can do this somehow. As for protecting yourself from the damage a casting of Protection from Energy
should do it.

Possible Scenario:

A Level 20 Phaerimm Spellcaster has learned the Spell Apocalypse from the Sky. He writes a arcane
thesis about it and then, because Phaerimm are evil, he proceeds to devastate the world with his new
toy.

Method #8: Wightocalypse

Spoiler
The Premise:

Creatures slain by negative levels become wights. Wights can constitution drain other creatures
and turn them into more wights. Cue scroll enervation which a low leve character then casts on a
commoner. The commoner becomes a wight 24 hours later, the wight then proceeds to kill more
commoners, growing more numerous. Soon the character's commoner infested hometown has
been cleaned out by wights. The wights more on to a new town and then another, finally
becoming a unstoppable ever increasing undead army. The wightocalypse occurs.

Possible Scenario:

A amateur necromancer living in a rural area, not knowing the great powers he is playing with,
casts Enervation from a scroll onto a cat. Satisfied when the cat dies, he wanders off and
promptly forgets about it. 24 hours later the Subject Alpha of the Wightocalypse rises from the
cat's remains.

Rebuttal:
Quote:

Originally Posted by Lateral

You've got the wrong version of the Wightocalypse. Just a scroll of Enervation is too easy for any
random character with class levels to stop- you'd have to get lucky.

The best way to do it is with a Snowcasted Flash Frost Fell Drain Locate City. That's a mere 4th
level spell at a base, and allows you to deal 2 cold damage and one negative level to everyone in
the area.

As for a build, say you have a Focused Specialist Diviner 6 with Arcane Thesis (Locate City),
Easy Metamagic (Fell Drain), Flash Frost, and Snowcasting. Your Locate City Wightbombs are
1st level spells- Locate City is 1st level, plus one for Flash Frost, minus one for Arcane Thesis,
plus one for Fell Drain, minus one for Easy Metamagic, minus one for Arcane Thesis again, is a
total +0 modifier. Let's say you have a 20 INT, so you have 7 1st-level spells, 6 2nd-level spells,
and 5 3rd-level spells. That's 18 slots that could potentially contain Wightbombs- if you cast all
of them on one city, you're pretty much guaranteed to turn even the strongest casters into wights.

As a 20th level caster, with... 26 INT, say, you have 66 spell slots before any feats or magic items
used specifically to get more. Your higher-level slots can go to Quickened ones and Twinned
ones- if you take Easy Metamagic (quicken) and (twin), all 5th-level to 9th-level slots are
Quickened Twinned ones, and 3rd and 4th slots are Twinned, so that's 116 total wightbombs. If
you can't destroy the entire world with 116 wightbombs, you aren't trying.
Further Notes + Minor Tangent:

Shadows would work better since they don't have daylight powerlessness.

A fell drain Fimbulwinter also works well for kickstarting the wightocalypse.

Method #9: Black Hole Time!

The Premise:

Acquire a Sphere of Annihilation, establish control over the sphere, send the sphere into the
center of the world. Planet implodes as all of its matter is sucked into the sphere

Possible Scenario:

A entropomancer acquires a SoA and does what any self-respecting entropomancer would do at
that point, namely destroying the world.

Alternate methods:

Locate a Umbral Blot, establish control control over the Umbral Blot via the Master's Voice feat
or a rod of Construct Control. If possible boost the size of the Blot, send the Blot into the centre
of the earth.

Method #10: Hell on Earth

The Premise:

Open a portal to the Abyss, in fact open several portals to the Abyss and some portals to Hell as
well while you're at it. Watch as the world is consumed by the eternally raging Blood War
between the Demons and Devils.

Possible Scenario:

Cabal of high level evil spellcasters die without securing their souls or assuring their resurrection
somehow, or just generally avoiding going to hell. The fiends of the lower planes are of course
delighted and utilize their new portalmakers as much as possible in order to invade da material
planez.

Method #11: Infinite Solar Loop/Infinite anything wish based loop

The Premise:

Get a Candle of Invocation or similiar. Gate in a solar who then gates in a solar who then gates in a solar
ad infinitum. Use infinite wish and storm of vengeance to destroy the world.

Possible Scenario:

All remaining scraps of sanity flee the D&D multiverse, solars are gated in left and right, ultimate cosmic
power is now available at low low prices.

Method #12: Why is the sky raining acid?!

Spoiler
The Premise:

The Skybleeder in the fiend Folio has the supernatural ability to rain acid down on those below
them from miles up in the sky, and some spell-like abilities seemingly chosen for air superiority.
A storm of a few dozen skybleeders could cruise around a few miles above a decent sized city
and decimate it with their acid rain, without the city even realizing what was attacking them.
Given enough of these babies you can destroy most surface based settlements with ease and no
opportunity for retaliation. Make them Shadow Skybleeders so that the move faster and can
plane shift to the Shadow Plane if things go south. Heck you could probably even attack the
planet itself, dealing a decent amount of damage per round and slowly eating away at the planet's
crust. The weather control special ability is especially nice as it can summon up hurricanes to
wreak some more havoc and can create conditions which makes their lighting bolt spell-like
ability more powerful.

A Windghost escort for each of your Skybleeder bombardment regiment would be ideal, since
Windghost(MMIII iirc) are the bane of spellcasters, and can easily get rid of magical forms of
flight.

Possible Scenario:

The Kaorti have been saving up Skybleeders for a long long time. Not just any Skybleeders, but
Shadow Skybleeders, transformed into fiendish creatures by the Kaorti's Vile Transformation
ability. Each Skybleeder carries seven dromite warlocks, capable of casting eldritch spear,
equipped with Icicle Rods, Circlets of Major Blasting, Rings of Fire Command and orbs of
weather control.. The skybleeder itself also has a ring of of Fire command, and each storm of 12
SKybleeders are escorted by a Fiendish Shadow Windghost.

The Kaorti have managed to muster around 40 such storms, and now unleashes them on the
world to cause great havoc. Unless they come up with effective countermeasures, and soon, the
races inhabiting the world are doomed.

Further Notes:

Giving some sort of earthglide to the skybleeders would mean that not even underground cites
would be safe.

Method #13: The world never existed!

Spoiler
The Premise:

Use divination magic to determine when the world was formed. Go to outer space. Use eschew
materials or another way to dodge needing material components and use the Teleport Through
Time spell to send you, a large riverine container filled with quintessence(Hereafter referred to
as stasis pod), some immoveable rods(coated by a layer of riverine), sovereign glue and a
warforged psion thrall back in time to a thousand years or so before the world was formed. You
might want to have some ability damage healing methods in hand in case of a mishap occurring.
Have a warforged thrall with a activated immoveable rod waiting at the location you teleported
from.

Have the warforged psion that you teleported back in time with you manifest forced
dream(Magic of Ebberon pg.104). Place him in the stasis pod. Attach immoveable rods with
sovereign glue. Activate immoveable rods.

The warforged you left back in your original time should see the stasis pod popping into
existence. He then opens the pod and removes the psion thrall. The psion thrall activates forced
dream.

The universe resets to the beginning of the of the warforged's turn, which was back before the
the world was formed.

Bonus:
After all this set up a resetting forced dream trap with a stasis pod warforged in it and some sort
of clock set to reset time every century or so. Stable time loop. The universe now replays the
same century, before the world was formed, over and over again with no progress being made.

Credits:

Credit goes to Fishy's awesome Dream of Metal for the basic idea. I just expanded the scale.

Method #14: True Creation Bomb

Spoiler
The Premise:

The True Creation spell can create permanent completely real matter of any sort whatsoever as
long as it is nonmagical and then gives a volume limit per level but no weight limit. Create
antimatter, strangelets, strange matter, Neutronium, Uranium etc. Destroy world in a orgy of high
level physics. Use Phaerimm, Shadowcasting or Eschew Materials to dodge the Material
Component requirements.

Further reading:

Some guy calculated the damage for a anti-osmium bomb.

685 quadrillion hp damage anyone?

Got it! Eschew Materials feat + Major Creation.

There's no book value listed for either Osmium or it's antimatter counterpart. Just summon Anti-
Osmium to the limit of your casting ability in contact with the critter. (Point of order: given an Earth-
equivalent density, and assuming it has the DR of rock at all points, it takes a 17th level caster to
summon enough Anti-Osmium to fragment the planet. Imagine what a 50th could do.)

EDIT:
Osmium is 22610 kg/cubic meter. A 50th level caster summons 50 cubic feet, or a cube 3.7 feet to a side.
This converts over to be roughly 15.25 cubic meters, for a final density of 344,802 kg. 1 gram of
antimatter produces roughly a 43 kiloton reaction (doubling once the matter is added into the equation,
so the detonation of 1g of AM in contact with 1g of matter is 86kt). We have 344,802,500 grams of anti-
osmium, for a total yield of 29,653,015,000,000 kilotons. (these are metric tons of 1,000kg each, for a
total of 29,653,015,000,000,000 kiloGRAMS of TNT) 1 lb of TNT does 3d6 damage, or, converting over,
0.454 kg of TNT does 3d6 damage. So, dividing 29,653,015,000,000,000 by 0.454 yields
65,315,011,013,215,859 increments of 3d6. So, multiply by three, and get 195,945,033,039,647,577d6
damage.
Congratulations, you've just done 195 quadrillion damage minimum. Your average damage is
685,807,615,638,766,519 hp.

685 quadrillion hp damage. That ought to blow through most DR. And it's not fire damage (even though
TNT is usually thought of that way). It's just plain old force damage.

Method #15: Orbital Walls of Force

Spoiler
The Premise:

Walls of Force are completely immoveable, unlike those moveable "immoveable" rods. Cast a
few permanenced Walls of Force in the orbital path of the planet. Watch fireworks as the planet
grinds up against a immoveable object.

Notes:

This ruling of how Walls of Force works could make using them in the conventional
manner...interesting to say the least.

Method #16: Fun with extradimensional spaces

Notes:

Due to lack of rules on extradimensional spaces this may or may not work. This requires a broad
interpretation of the "hazardous" nature of putting extradimenional in a rope trick as described in the
said spell's description.

Another possible method is putting a portable hole inside a bag of holding inside portable hole inside a
bag of holding or something similiar.

Method #17: IRON! HEART! SURGE!

Spoiler
The Premise:

A sufficiently broad reading of the Iron Heart Surge Maneuver(Tome of Battle pg.68) can see it
remove pretty much anything bothering you. The sun shining in your eyes? IHS the sun away!
Gravity getting you down! IHS the planet away! No more planet!
 Method #18: Sun Gate Cannon
The Premise:

While most teleport spells limit themselves to creatures, preventing the passage of unattended
objects and the like, the gate spell is a notable exception to this. As such you could open a gate
from the material plane to a intermediary plane(gates only function between planes) and then
open a gate from that plane to the heart of the sun.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DoctorGlock

The Gate network sun cannon works as follows:

1: Open a gate to the plane of fire

2: Open a parallel gate to the heart of the sun
3: Observe million mile long 30 million degree plasma lance impact and likely ignite the
atmosphere and melt through the crust
4: Wake up on your demiplane with a massive headache

Method #19: Metabreath

The Premise:

Certain of the metabreath feats in the Draconomicon allow you stack their effects without limit,
but increases the recovery times between uses of your breath weapon each time you apply the
feat. As such some creature with a breath weapon could stack the Enlarge Breath feat ad
nauseam to engulf the entire planet in a massive energystorm, though at the cost of probably
never using their breath weapon ever again, but that's the price one has to pay for destroying the
world.

Bonus points for using it in conjunction with Lingering Breath to make said energystorm last a
few centuries/millennia. Further bonus points for adding in the Breath Weapon Admixture power
to also effect those creatures that are immune to your breath's energy type. Even more bonus
points for using a Pyroclastic Dragon's disintegrating breath instead.

Quote:

The build:
Bobo the Mouth Breather
Level 1: Human Dragonfire Adept (from Dragon Magic) with Enlarge Breath (Draconomicon
p70) and Clinging Breath (also from Draconomicon). We'll give him an 18 Con, and pick a
breath weapon with a cone shape. No magic items or anything else is important. We'll give him
minimum stats in everything else, just because it's funny.
Level 4 (alternate build): Human Dragon Shaman (from PHB2) with Enlarge Breath, Clinging
Breath, and Lingering Breath.
Alternatively, we can play as any other class or race that gets breath weapons.
At higher levels, we'll take (in order): Heighten Breath, Shape Breath, Spreading Breath,
Maximize Breath

The Nova Round (literally):

We breathe. Our breath weapon covers the world, and the world dies. End of story.

Explanation:
Enlarge Breath is a metabreath feat that explicitly allows itself to stack any number of times.
Each time you do it, you get to increase the range of your power by 50% in exchange for waiting
another round for your breath weapon to recover. For something the size of the Earth, it will
need 48 million stacks of Enlarge Breath (yes, I calculated it), and then we will have to wait 5
years to be able to do it again.

At level 1, this will deal roughly 1d6(+1d3 from Clinging Breath) fire damage to all things on
the surface of the earth. People with full cover naturally won't be affected, but this will set fire to
all buildings, kill most low level creatures, destroy all the farms in the world, and generally be a
world-ending event. All Caused by a level 1 adventurer.

...who will probably gain significant amounts of XP from killing all that stuff, and so will be
better prepared for the retribution headed his way. Oh, and he's immune to his own breath
weapon, so that's not a worry, either. Though he should probably pack some lunch.

At level 4, we gain lingering breath, which allows us to leave behind a cloud that deals half the
damage of the original attack (2d6 now) in the same area. The cost is two rounds of cooldown
per one round of duration added. So if we had 5 more years of duration, we gain 10 years of
cooldown. Not bad - the world becomes a burning firescape for 5 years, with all creatures on the
surface taking 1d6 damage. Eventually it will burn though most enclosed spaces, leading to a
more total devestation. The only survivors on the surface will be people with evasion (and no
need to sleep) and/or those with at least 6 points of fire resistance.

Also, since we'd be a dragon shaman at this point, we can choose acid or cold as our breath
weapon. (As the poet said: Will the world end in fire or in ice? You decide!)

Method #20: TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reltzik

Variant on the infinite-wish/solar summon loop: TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!

The difference is that with the infinite solar loop, we eventually "cash in" on all those wishes.
With TRIBBLES OF DOOM!!!, the summons are their own reward.
Simply continue loop until the number of summons fills up the entirety of the breathable
atmosphere. Assuming earthlike conditions, this is less than 4 *10^19 (4 billion billion).

Assume that each solar occupies 4 cubic meters. We only need to summon a billion billion of
them.

.... actually, forget solars. Efreeti give us 3 wishes and they're ON FIRE. Assuming that they take
up a square meter each, we only need to summon 500 million million. (Yes, I just used the word
"only" with a straight face.) I also hereby dub this new approach FLAMING TRIBBLES OF
DOOM!!!

Summons in Round n +1 = Summons in Round n + summons in Round n -1. (The summons by

those that were made in round n-2 are negated by the fact that these efreeti go back home once
they're summoned) The total population at the end of round n+1 is the sum of these three values.

So population at round n = 2*population at round n-1 + 2*population at round n-2 +

population at n-3. This means we are more than tripling our population every 3 rounds. The
sequence would look like this:

1 2 6 15 44 124 351 ...

As you can see, we're slightly-less-than-trippling the population every round. At this rate, we'll
reach our "mere" 5 million million efreeti... sometime around round 30. THREE MINUTES
AFTER WE STARTED SUMMONING. At this point every point on the surface of the world is
jam-packed with a fire elemental. All crops burn, all people burn, oceans boil, everything that
doesn't absorb fire as HP dies, and the efreeti keep summoning. In practice, of course, some
adventurers grab their swords and wands and put a dent in the population growth.... but really,
you can't fight exponential growth.

At some point there's just so many at once that the entire world collapses into a star... and then a
black hole. (Of course, by this point most of the efreeti are dying and unsummoning before
granting all three wishes, but by this point the point is moot.)

Recommended method: Planar binding (with dimensional anchor, magic circle, etc) for the first
Efreeti, all of which should be quite accessible for a wizard/sorceror at level 13. No material
cost at all.

Open problem: Finding a way to relay your wishes to all the Efreeti at once. Should be possible
with a carefully-worded Wish -- perhaps that the Efreeti are summoned "knowing" that they are
your captive and "knowing" what your wishes are.
Alternate Methods:

Have a Chicken Infested Commoner summon infinite chickens as a free action. CHICKEN
APOCALYPSE!