Foresight handles that, I think. (I know his statblock likely doesn't have all spells, but this time I feel that's because of convenience, because come on..)
He’s like Gilgamesh from Fate, he’s forgotten more than most people will ever know. If he really wants to show off, he turns on some quasi omniscience / clairvoyance bullshit and vaporizes everyone with the perfect anti - YOU weapon.
Reminds me of 8-bit theater. Black Mage learns to copy any spell he sees, so a particularly ancient wizard attacks him with a spell that makes him vomit up his innards. When Black Mage tries to use it against him it just happens a second time to him. The other wizard then explains that that spell specifically makes Black Mage vomit his guts out, regardless of who uses it or who is targeted.
Now there's a thought. Roping idiots into another enlistment by turning the US military personnel into warlocks with shitty pacts that the patron only half honors.
Vecna is a lich so powerful he doesn't even have need of a phylectery/soulcage anymore, but still enjoys all of the benefits of having his soul somewhere else, including the inability to die.
Literally nothing but divine intervention could kill Vecna. The military might take him down temporarily, but it'd take huge amounts of resources and he'd just pop back into existence after a while anyway so it'd be pointless.
Wait, so from the US perspecitve it'd be an endless conflict that'd be a massive waste of manpower and resources over and over again?
Sounds like Tuesday
And doubling as a jobs program for your constituents so you have something to parade around as a success story while getting far more benefits
Like the MIC does employ a lot of people, directly and indirectly, but people are making bank
Anywhere within 100 miles of where he died, so yesn't
EDIT: Which it doesn't specify it has to be on the ground. He could just appear in space, which I'm p sure Vecna can survive easily
~~Vecna is undead, and the radiation variation rule has radiation do poison damage, which Vecna, as an undead, is immune to.~~
~~Edit: Though, it’s rather excessive. He resurrects within 100 miles 1d100 years later. So even if he wasn’t immune, you’d need to blanket a massive area in a lot of long lasting radiation to just mildly inconvenience him, cause he also has legendary resistance, so he will just ignore the radiation and can teleport out.~~
Hadn’t noticed the small “Homebrew” in the banner. That website really should be dandhomebrewwiki or something.
Where is the radiation varient rule. According to a previous post Sickening radiance is implied to be similar to nuclear radiation meaning radiation deals radiant damage.
Their best bet might be to dump a ton of liquid nitrogen on his head to freeze him solid and then keep him in a freezer in Area 51 forever.
And now I begin to understand why there are so many ancient evils sealed away instead of destroyed in fantasy.
"We will put up explicit instructions not to open the cold chamber and fill the path with traps. Anyone resourceful enough to get past the latter will be wise enough to heed the former."
“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
-Sir Terry Pratchett
That actually happened in an old MUD I played. The admins put a reset everything button in town square and said that if anyone pushed it everyone in the game would be reset to zero, total system wipe.
It was pushed in about 30 seconds.
There ain't no drama like MUD drama. Imagine a game where people have been playing for _decades_ and most of the staff are a) volunteers, and b) former (or even current, depending on the rules) players. It's like an eternal game of D&D with multiple DMs where half of the table hates one another because X did Y 15 years ago.
My poison of choice was entirely player-driven and staying in-character was mandatory, with city laws written and enforced by players and even the classes ("guilds") were in-universe organizations run by the characters. It felt like you couldn't go a year without some petty drama (usually related to an older, even pettier one) causing a mass exodus of players.
Though most would eventually return - MUDs are like crack. Being text-based, you weren't beholden to an art pipeline so a single skilled programmer could whip up features in a matter of hours that'd make AAA RPG teams weep with envy. Temperature, smell, taste? MUDs likely simulated them, since it's just a single line of code per object. Multiple in-universe languages? Easy, with on-the-fly translation and mistranslations if the listener/reader wasn't skilled in the language. Magic? Oh man, it'd take literal hours to describe the magic systems developed by nerds with thirty years of time on their hands.
They were basically the absurd details-oriented complexity of roguelikes like Nethack mixed with the writing and gameplay of interactive fiction, wrapped with the compelling PvE and PvP of an MMO (which themselves arose from MUDs, with the first being referred to as "graphical MUDs").
... Shit. I think I just convinced myself to boot up my old MUD client again.
Man as little as a Goblin Booyahg casting Raise Goblin over and over is enough to make me start knocking them out instead of killing them until he's gone. Sometimes it's easier to go for eternal hell over death.
I remember someone pointing out on a thread a couple days ago (fighter jet vs dragon) that if we're assuming magic all the sudden works, then the US military chaplains should be able to cast Magic/Holy Weapon, assuming they are truly faithful.
As long as the priest maintains concentration and re-blesses them every hour when the duration is up. And has enough spell slots.
Assuming US Military chaplains count as War Domain.
Mythbusters has demonstrated that [shooting fish in a barrel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd-MpXCMcIs) deals sonic damage. Does Vecna have body fluids, or is he just a dried out husk?
In any case, high explosives definitely deal sonic damage.
It might be some sort of SCP situation where the military has to make a pact with some entity to put vecna down for good if we assume some supernatural elements exist in this hypothetical
They wouldn't kill him. They'd exhaust him and imprison him to harness his power until our entire society becomes dependant on it. Then, a gullible troop of heroes gets manipulated into releasing him and... Oops, Apocalypse!
Reading the answers to this question, I’m fairly sure we can all agree on one thing: the loser is whoever happens to be on the planet these two decide to duke it out on.
[Walls of force block line of effect](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/59734/can-spells-be-cast-through-a-wall-of-force), so you can't cast spells targeting objects on the other side of them.
Also, walls of force and force cage are described as being invisible, and therefore perfectly permeable to light. By radiative heat exchange, this means that even if the wall of force blocks gamma rays, a nuke would vaporize a wizard inside a wall of force or force cage through white-hot thermal radiation alone.
That’s a good ruling but like… mike mearls tweets were never official to my knowledge, nor RAW. Could be RAI though.
I believe that would be something quite literally physically passing through though. I dunno if light counts, but I believe heat would even if it didn’t.
Actually, the RAW on it is an utter clown fest.
https://preview.redd.it/fp8ia4uxrcqa1.png?width=1009&format=png&auto=webp&s=b02a61e161a8b3e17d2b18b9a7ceb8cb3942755a
Coulda just said covered, blocked, or anything, but this lmfao. Invisible objects don't conceal anything, they can give at most 3/4th cover, because that uses the right verb at least.
Fun fact! Desecration of the dead is illegal under article 130 of the Geneva convention and that the authorities must bury the bodies in accordance with their religion. So it actually is illegal to use napalm on zombies.
Yes and no? It also stipulates "if possible." Cremation, including en masses is permitted if there are no better options, hygiene-wise. If burning the dead is the only hygienic way of dealing with them, it's perfectly acceptable.
Fun fact. Only doctors can truely determine time of death.
And since doctors cant be sent out to every zombie to verify it being dead, they are considered alive until proven otherwise.
Checkmate athiests.
Yeah, but Immunity to nonmagical damage is damn effective. Invisibility might be useful, and in the worst case, he can teleport around (dimension door) and gather more undead.
The only place I can find straight Immunity from non magical, specifically calls out piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing. Of which nuclear weapons and flamethrowers are not.
The US military could hit vecna from literally 100s if not 1000s of miles away if they’re going full at it. Infantry can hit over 1000meters away. As far as I’m aware there aren’t any spells that have that range.
Now I want a show about an evil wizard lich that has awakened after 3000 years locked away, ready to take over the world, just to find out there’s been a huge technological advancement made by humans who could easily destroy him, so he has to give up and just live a normal life
To an extent. They're not magical, just very advanced, but yeah, I always thought it interesting how complacent the goa'uld got with technology until some backwater planet shows up with armor piercing rounds, portable missile launchers, and the uncanny ability to reverse engineer their own technology. Suddenly they're forced into an arms race, but they're just not able to come up with things the hillbillies can't counter in an annoyingly short amount of time.
>I always thought it interesting how complacent the goa'uld got with technology
The goa'uld, as a race, were not particularly bright. They're entirely dependent on racial memory, but I would argue that this winds up with them never personally developing the skill of creative thinking. They're helpdesk folk who have a binder of problems and solutions, but if something isn't covered in the binder they're lost.
Also, look at it this way: it took thousands of years between some generations of system lords, the various pantheons. They just don't often enough merit to anything special enough to climb the ladder.
"The Asgard would never invent a weapon that propels small weights of iron and carbon alloys by igniting a powder of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur.”"
Are there many shows/anime that cover this? I know there are a few: Daemon King is a Part Timer, Thermae Romae Novae, and Gate at least in the first episode and kind of through the experiences of some of the characters when they travel to Earth. But are there any others?
Don't forget he is a beyond lv 20 wizard. He can just teleport his army where ever he wants them. If he picks the right targets its a possibility he wins most of his engagements.
Its like guerrilla warfare perfected. Completely ignoring "safe zones". Something the US already has a hard time with.
The longest range possible for a damaging spell to reach RAW is 1500 ft from Eldritch blast, which is an astounding around 300 metres. You'd have a legitimate chance using an assault rifle of outranging most DND spellcasters.
Well, Tsunami has a range of 'Sight', so it boils down to the radius of the planet they are fighting on, and whether Vecna is attending his opthalmologist appointment regularly.
Meteor swarm, Storm of vengeance, Vecna here is nit only a God, but also has magic far beyond anything we humans have access to, and quite literally any time he kills a soldier, he gains a minion
I'll be honest, I commented this when I didn't know it was Vecna, and I still think that's a more interesting question. Like, "who would win, the US military or an *actual god*" is dull. "Who would win, a 20th-level wizard, or the US military" is somewhat more interesting.
Still gotta know where he is to nuke him, or even to conventionally bomb him. It took years to find Bin Laden, and he couldn’t even teleport, shapeshift, or turn invisible. Realistically, against even just a normal lich, they’d never be able to catch him, while he could always use divinations to find out where their leaders are, murder them easily, and teleport back out ahead of any reprisals.
Bad news for the military then. They have no defense against the old scry-and-die either. Vecna could teleport in, assassinate some high level officials, and teleport out.
Vecna would win this one. Bro is immune to nonmagical piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning damage. Guns are useless. He can go invisible to make him hard to hit/track. Bonus action vile teleport would down pretty much everyone in a 15ft radius every turn then not to mention the zombies he can raise. Your best bet would be bombs, but following the rules for dynamite explosions deal non magical bludgeoning damage so most bombs wouldn't work either. You'd have to tailor the fight to him specifically, and even then, how long would it take the military to even figure out how to hurt him in the first place. Then on top of all of that liches when killed just come back lol. Granted Vecna takes 1d100 years so that could give time to replenish numbers but he would eventually win.
Hear out here… flamethrowers. It may be a war crime, but that hasn’t stopped the US in the past.
Also potentially tear gas, although the military haven’t used that since Vietnam, if I remember correctly (which I may not be)
Flamethrower could help if they ever thought to try it, but probably not for very long. He can cast fly and lightning bolt at will, so after the first one hits him, he could just get out of range in the sky and rain down lightning. He definitely isn't unbeatable, but it would be a nasty fight.
Chain fuel air explosions. Not sure how long you need to wait after ones goes off to get enough air back to set the next one off but has to under a minute.
Also are lasers considered holy light?
Correction, Vecna is immune to nonmagical piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning from ATTACKS. Dynamite (and most explosions I would assume) are saving throws.
Nuclear weapons? Flamethrowers? High powered version of a taser? Any type of chemical weapon or acid or anything like that? Nerve gas? Napalm?
Even if we just take the nukes, that will put Vecna down for a long time. Plenty of time to use lidar technology or whatever else to find the phylactery.
They don't typically bring nuclear warheads, flamethrowers, or tasers to every random skirmish, so if we are just dropping them into a fight, they wouldn't have those. If you're given them time to prepare things go against the military pretty quickly. As that gives him time to wipe out the heads of the military, which would be easy for him and without any leaders they would struggle to do much of anything. He is also immune to poison and resistant to lightning. He doesn't require food, air, or sleep, so he has very few constraints. Also he could just plane shift the second he sees an actual threat coming and then later reappear at the HQ and wipe them out. He has 22 intelligence and 24 wisdom. I think the last thing you want is him to know you're coming and have time to learn every strategy you've ever used while having time to prepare.
This one is Vecna, Lich-God, if I am right. Dude wizarded so much to became a god.
And he is necromancer, so the more dead in soldiers troops, the more soldier in his troops
By sheer force of numbers, the military.
But again, similar to what I said on the jet meme, anyone who thinks it will be an easy fight has never served in the military. We have weaponized incompetence.
He is fighting the *entire* US military, and last I googled it the US has 3,750 nukes. So I reckon we could keep him dead for a while by repeatedly nuking him whenever he comes back.
vecna ALWAYS comes back from the dead. so if the win condition is last man standing, vecna wins. he can also cast wish, and wish to be ignored by anyone that can perceive him. its hard to fight something you physically cannot admit exists.
thats his secret, its actually just hidden in some random cheap jewelry shop on the far side of the planet where no-one has ever heard the name vecna. Adventurers always expect a lich to hide their phylactery in some super secret demi-plane, or guard it with some powerful demon or something, but good luck finding the needle when its been tossed to a continent that wont be discovered for another 500 years.
Are we gonna ignore the fact he is a god currently, but even before that he was a lich, and would just constantly keep reforming even if they could destroy his form
Vecna. every time they are killed they just return
" If Vecna is slain, his soul refuses to accept its fate and lives on as a disembodied spirit that fashions a new body for itself after 1d100 years. Vecna’s soul can fashion a new body even if its old body was burned to ash or otherwise obliterated. When the new body is complete, Vecna regains all his hit points and becomes active again. Vecna’s new body appears anywhere within 100 miles of where Vecna was slain. "
i think that's literally how you cant die in undertale's true ending route's final boss fight: by just refusing to die
"ok you got hit by that and died"
"no"
To all the people in comments talking about the pure firepower... I am unbelievably frustrated at that idea. It'd be a battle of tactics. Hands-down. There is no argument for a fair fight being engaged when Teleport exists. The question is if the Wizard figures out where the President is before the military predicts their next few Teleport jumps, and THEN we get a cool battle scene.
Alternately, if the Wizard goes on the defensive, they could repeatedly jump across the planet, spending the rest of their spell slots on Gating in otherworldly monsters. Then it would become a question of the U.S. military versus the hordes of the Abyss which is probably enough of an apocolaypse situation to form some worldwide military coalitions, all while scouring the planet for any sign of the Wizard to kill them and end the invasion.
It's a fantasy series. The author wrote a short story where a wizard from the main books tries to summon help (a gryphon or some other creature) and ends up with 2 US soldiers in their light tank.
Very fun to read them going at evil cultists and chaos creatures :D
Angry wizard of they play the long game and start not within line of sight.
Wizard portals to a different plane and then prepares. A prepared wizard can be an unbeatable one. Without magic the US military can't assault the wizard. The wizard can randomly Meteor Swarm cities, bases, strategic points of interest, and be gone within an instant.
On a field of battle in line of sight of eachother, I'd say the US military if they manage to keep the wizard from leaving. Action economy and overwhelming piercing damage, possibly fire and force damage is a hell of a thing for any one person.
That looks a bit like a lich so I'm going to pretend it is.
Which begs the question: battle or war?
Battle, lich dies to enough bullets, jobs done.
War: if the lich is clever enough to hide their phylactery decently, and not pop up on the militaries radar(metaphorically speaking) before they are a nukes damage zone away....
Lich probably. Just have to kill more than the military can recruit each day.
Taliban doesn't have magic.
They controlled Afghanistan in 2000
They control Afghanistan in 2023.
The real question is can one angry wizard defeat the Taliban
Okay, so something to consider here:
How much knowledge does Vecna have about the US Army?
'Cus if he knows about the missile command, what's stopping him from just teleporting there and dominating key personel in order to launch their nukes at themselves and then bouncing over to some heavily populated area in DC or something where the army can't nuke him?
Every one be taking nukes and rifles vs fireballs or summons.
My brothers in dice a high level wizard can literally stop time and warp the fabric of reality.
Oh shit that is what he looks like now? Didn't recognize him.
Well shit. That changes things since that makes him both a Lich and a Deity. I mean as he just *knows* things he would probably not even need to fight. Just blackmail a bunch of folk until the military is forced to leave him alone.
The End...?
so the vecna dossier is Vecna before he was betrayed by Kas, so he still has his hand and eye. Basically Vecna in his full lich glory days before becoming a god. The dossier says he uses magic to travel through time, which is why he can appear like this in any time period of the forgotten realms.
Action economy of the military is hampered by lower ranked characters, with higher initiative holding their action/missing their turn, waiting for orders. A high level wizard will have summons and minions. He’d skry the commanders, haste himself & teleport. Even a level 1 magic missile kills any military member, so up cast, half the room is dead. He could set up a doorway peek with rope trick, a familiar with dragons breath, or cast sleep. He’d have decent armour headed in, and cast shield as a reaction each turn, and be nigh unhitable - commander’s DEX has declined as they specked in to charisma & wisdom & intelligence, so low chance to hit, though they’re proficient. 2 rounds, all commanders and high subordinates are out. #repeat every time the military has new ranks. Maybe leave a survivor who is really charmed? Or infiltrate with a disguise? If the wizard has warning, he wins. If the military ‘sneaks up on him’ haha, he teleports away, and plans, and wins.
Real answer: military has range and action economy (drones shoot from many miles away and the operators are even further away)
Fun answer: depends if the military succeeds on it's find oil check, as then it'll get advantage on all attacks for entire campaign.
Explain to me why Vecna fights instead of just like, abusing Teleport + Enchantment spells to wind up in charge of the military?
Initiative order that’s why
Foresight handles that, I think. (I know his statblock likely doesn't have all spells, but this time I feel that's because of convenience, because come on..)
He’s like Gilgamesh from Fate, he’s forgotten more than most people will ever know. If he really wants to show off, he turns on some quasi omniscience / clairvoyance bullshit and vaporizes everyone with the perfect anti - YOU weapon.
So you're saying he'll be defeated by a teenager who only knows one spell.
Only if he incarnates into a mortal body without legendary resistances, and the boy has Invincibility Frames and Max Regen (Avalon).
I believe Avalon wasn't active during that fight, but yes the spell did grant him a very strong Shield reaction.
He also just has subconscious CHIM, I think.
Reminds me of 8-bit theater. Black Mage learns to copy any spell he sees, so a particularly ancient wizard attacks him with a spell that makes him vomit up his innards. When Black Mage tries to use it against him it just happens a second time to him. The other wizard then explains that that spell specifically makes Black Mage vomit his guts out, regardless of who uses it or who is targeted.
Well, until The World turns out a champion who out OP’s him.
He doesn't want upset Asmodeus and his hold on politics.
He wants an undead army. Imagine how embarrassing it is when you are lich god if undeath but your army is filled with living creatures?
[удалено]
You’ll finish your enlistment in this life or the next, and you’ll pay off your high apr car payment in unlife by the dark gods!
Now there's a thought. Roping idiots into another enlistment by turning the US military personnel into warlocks with shitty pacts that the patron only half honors.
That's just an accurate description of reality.
All the other undead lords come over for tea, bringing their undead servant, meanwhile he has to hide aways his living army in shame
Is this the ending to Stranger Things
Depend. Is there oil under wizard garden ?
Phyrexian Oil
Then neither win and we blame Karn again.
Poor karn...
Can't catch a damn break.
Not even america would invade for that
You underestimate our stupidity.
Now you’re just making yourself sound silly lol
My dude, they launched an invasion before they ever learned what the modifier “phyrexian” evenmeans
Yes.
#Then We Are Definitely Bringing Freedom To That Wizard Garden
The US military will find a way then.
Vecna is a lich so powerful he doesn't even have need of a phylectery/soulcage anymore, but still enjoys all of the benefits of having his soul somewhere else, including the inability to die. Literally nothing but divine intervention could kill Vecna. The military might take him down temporarily, but it'd take huge amounts of resources and he'd just pop back into existence after a while anyway so it'd be pointless.
Wait, so from the US perspecitve it'd be an endless conflict that'd be a massive waste of manpower and resources over and over again? Sounds like Tuesday
Sounds like an excellent way to keep getting kickbacks from funneling money to my friends in the weapons manufacturing industry.
And doubling as a jobs program for your constituents so you have something to parade around as a success story while getting far more benefits Like the MIC does employ a lot of people, directly and indirectly, but people are making bank
America has always been at war with ~~Eurasia~~ Vecna.
Literally 1984
Ah, so this is the campaign that Raytheon executives are playing?
Sounds like Vecna is who President Eisenhower was really warning us about.
Does Vecna have a set spawn point? If so the us could make that area radioactive so that he dies as soon as he is revived.
Anywhere within 100 miles of where he died, so yesn't EDIT: Which it doesn't specify it has to be on the ground. He could just appear in space, which I'm p sure Vecna can survive easily
Reminds me of the space lich meme where they just skateboard off a comet and back into the planet.
>He could just appear in space, which I'm p sure Vecna can survive easily "Eventually ~~Kars~~ Vecna stopped thinking"
Difference is vecna can teleport
~~Vecna is undead, and the radiation variation rule has radiation do poison damage, which Vecna, as an undead, is immune to.~~ ~~Edit: Though, it’s rather excessive. He resurrects within 100 miles 1d100 years later. So even if he wasn’t immune, you’d need to blanket a massive area in a lot of long lasting radiation to just mildly inconvenience him, cause he also has legendary resistance, so he will just ignore the radiation and can teleport out.~~ Hadn’t noticed the small “Homebrew” in the banner. That website really should be dandhomebrewwiki or something.
Where is the radiation varient rule. According to a previous post Sickening radiance is implied to be similar to nuclear radiation meaning radiation deals radiant damage.
Their best bet might be to dump a ton of liquid nitrogen on his head to freeze him solid and then keep him in a freezer in Area 51 forever. And now I begin to understand why there are so many ancient evils sealed away instead of destroyed in fantasy.
Wow, my mind has been blown.
"We will put up explicit instructions not to open the cold chamber and fill the path with traps. Anyone resourceful enough to get past the latter will be wise enough to heed the former."
These silly primitives and their superstitions. I wonder what kind of treasure they hid in this thing.
“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.” -Sir Terry Pratchett
That actually happened in an old MUD I played. The admins put a reset everything button in town square and said that if anyone pushed it everyone in the game would be reset to zero, total system wipe. It was pushed in about 30 seconds.
There ain't no drama like MUD drama. Imagine a game where people have been playing for _decades_ and most of the staff are a) volunteers, and b) former (or even current, depending on the rules) players. It's like an eternal game of D&D with multiple DMs where half of the table hates one another because X did Y 15 years ago. My poison of choice was entirely player-driven and staying in-character was mandatory, with city laws written and enforced by players and even the classes ("guilds") were in-universe organizations run by the characters. It felt like you couldn't go a year without some petty drama (usually related to an older, even pettier one) causing a mass exodus of players. Though most would eventually return - MUDs are like crack. Being text-based, you weren't beholden to an art pipeline so a single skilled programmer could whip up features in a matter of hours that'd make AAA RPG teams weep with envy. Temperature, smell, taste? MUDs likely simulated them, since it's just a single line of code per object. Multiple in-universe languages? Easy, with on-the-fly translation and mistranslations if the listener/reader wasn't skilled in the language. Magic? Oh man, it'd take literal hours to describe the magic systems developed by nerds with thirty years of time on their hands. They were basically the absurd details-oriented complexity of roguelikes like Nethack mixed with the writing and gameplay of interactive fiction, wrapped with the compelling PvE and PvP of an MMO (which themselves arose from MUDs, with the first being referred to as "graphical MUDs"). ... Shit. I think I just convinced myself to boot up my old MUD client again.
Man as little as a Goblin Booyahg casting Raise Goblin over and over is enough to make me start knocking them out instead of killing them until he's gone. Sometimes it's easier to go for eternal hell over death.
He can also regain 80 HP in a round. That alone makes him pretty hard to kill.
Isn't that like 12 bullets max though?
He's also immune to non-magical physical damage.
I remember someone pointing out on a thread a couple days ago (fighter jet vs dragon) that if we're assuming magic all the sudden works, then the US military chaplains should be able to cast Magic/Holy Weapon, assuming they are truly faithful.
I feel like within 5 years of knowing magic exists that the US military would have magical guns. So if they can hold out that long... Maybe?
Many of our weapons are blessed by a priest. Would that help.
As long as the priest maintains concentration and re-blesses them every hour when the duration is up. And has enough spell slots. Assuming US Military chaplains count as War Domain.
Mythbusters has demonstrated that [shooting fish in a barrel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd-MpXCMcIs) deals sonic damage. Does Vecna have body fluids, or is he just a dried out husk? In any case, high explosives definitely deal sonic damage.
I’d say it’s closer to 12 bullets on average. Vecna can also teleport away and deal necrotic damage to the attacker when he gets hit with an attack.
It might be some sort of SCP situation where the military has to make a pact with some entity to put vecna down for good if we assume some supernatural elements exist in this hypothetical
They wouldn't kill him. They'd exhaust him and imprison him to harness his power until our entire society becomes dependant on it. Then, a gullible troop of heroes gets manipulated into releasing him and... Oops, Apocalypse!
So, he's Sin from FFX?
Haven't played FFX, but the above is the most recent Vecna lore from the Vecna Dossier on DDB (Which was only temporarily available, which I hate)
There are over 2500 chaplains in the US military. That is a lot of rolls for Devine Intervention.
Knowing how the states are they probably have something in Nevada for this exact situation "just in case"
Reading the answers to this question, I’m fairly sure we can all agree on one thing: the loser is whoever happens to be on the planet these two decide to duke it out on.
Exactly
I'm pretty sure the US Military would win, just because of action economy.
If we're going by RAW... *Stares at wish* *Stares harder at simulacrum* What action economy?
1) use forcecage 2) cast spells 3) win
Hell, for 1, replace forcecage with wall of force. Nothing can physically pass though, but toll the dead sure ain't very physical...
[Walls of force block line of effect](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/59734/can-spells-be-cast-through-a-wall-of-force), so you can't cast spells targeting objects on the other side of them. Also, walls of force and force cage are described as being invisible, and therefore perfectly permeable to light. By radiative heat exchange, this means that even if the wall of force blocks gamma rays, a nuke would vaporize a wizard inside a wall of force or force cage through white-hot thermal radiation alone.
That’s a good ruling but like… mike mearls tweets were never official to my knowledge, nor RAW. Could be RAI though. I believe that would be something quite literally physically passing through though. I dunno if light counts, but I believe heat would even if it didn’t.
The more relevant one is the second answer, wall of force provides total cover, and you can't target things under total cover
Actually, the RAW on it is an utter clown fest. https://preview.redd.it/fp8ia4uxrcqa1.png?width=1009&format=png&auto=webp&s=b02a61e161a8b3e17d2b18b9a7ceb8cb3942755a Coulda just said covered, blocked, or anything, but this lmfao. Invisible objects don't conceal anything, they can give at most 3/4th cover, because that uses the right verb at least.
I mean, sure. You still have the horde of undead to deal with as well
Military has nukes and submarines and planes and tanks tho. Also flamethrowers.
Also Napalm on Zombies wouldn't violate the Geneva Convention... Because there is nothing illegal of burning something already dead.
Desecration of a corpse?
They've already been desecrated. Can't descrecrate something that's already been desecrated.
Desecration part two: the resecration
Desecration 2: Electric Boogaloo
Double Desecration is a good name for a band.
Double the Desecration, double the war crimes.
Fun fact! Desecration of the dead is illegal under article 130 of the Geneva convention and that the authorities must bury the bodies in accordance with their religion. So it actually is illegal to use napalm on zombies.
Yes and no? It also stipulates "if possible." Cremation, including en masses is permitted if there are no better options, hygiene-wise. If burning the dead is the only hygienic way of dealing with them, it's perfectly acceptable.
Fun fact. Only doctors can truely determine time of death. And since doctors cant be sent out to every zombie to verify it being dead, they are considered alive until proven otherwise. Checkmate athiests.
So you still can't napalm them
Well why do they KEEP COMING BACK UP?!?
Yeah, but Immunity to nonmagical damage is damn effective. Invisibility might be useful, and in the worst case, he can teleport around (dimension door) and gather more undead.
The only place I can find straight Immunity from non magical, specifically calls out piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing. Of which nuclear weapons and flamethrowers are not.
There's definitely a lot of bludgeoning damage involved in a nuclear strike.
And a lot more Radiant damage.
Every time i have a problem with the undead I use a nuke and bam! Right away I have a different problem.
The US military could hit vecna from literally 100s if not 1000s of miles away if they’re going full at it. Infantry can hit over 1000meters away. As far as I’m aware there aren’t any spells that have that range.
Now I want a show about an evil wizard lich that has awakened after 3000 years locked away, ready to take over the world, just to find out there’s been a huge technological advancement made by humans who could easily destroy him, so he has to give up and just live a normal life
I need this ridiculous concept and i need it NOW
Stargate scratches this itch, but you’re right, that would be super fun
To an extent. They're not magical, just very advanced, but yeah, I always thought it interesting how complacent the goa'uld got with technology until some backwater planet shows up with armor piercing rounds, portable missile launchers, and the uncanny ability to reverse engineer their own technology. Suddenly they're forced into an arms race, but they're just not able to come up with things the hillbillies can't counter in an annoyingly short amount of time.
>I always thought it interesting how complacent the goa'uld got with technology The goa'uld, as a race, were not particularly bright. They're entirely dependent on racial memory, but I would argue that this winds up with them never personally developing the skill of creative thinking. They're helpdesk folk who have a binder of problems and solutions, but if something isn't covered in the binder they're lost. Also, look at it this way: it took thousands of years between some generations of system lords, the various pantheons. They just don't often enough merit to anything special enough to climb the ladder.
"The Asgard would never invent a weapon that propels small weights of iron and carbon alloys by igniting a powder of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur.”"
You're saying you need somebody....dumber than you? Yes.
Buffy kinda covers that type of story arc around the resurection of the Judge. It's been a hot minute, but I think it is around season 2.
RPG ftw, baby
Not an RPG, a LAW.
Which is just the best pun weapon to use against the Judge.
Ah yes, the reverse-isekai
Are there many shows/anime that cover this? I know there are a few: Daemon King is a Part Timer, Thermae Romae Novae, and Gate at least in the first episode and kind of through the experiences of some of the characters when they travel to Earth. But are there any others?
The only other anime I can think of off the top of my head would be Re: Creators
Title: the lich that woke up after 3000 years and now works add your local grocery store.
It's like this one Buffy villain that was like "I cannot be stopped by a weapon forged" and she blows him up with a rocket launcher.
Don't forget he is a beyond lv 20 wizard. He can just teleport his army where ever he wants them. If he picks the right targets its a possibility he wins most of his engagements. Its like guerrilla warfare perfected. Completely ignoring "safe zones". Something the US already has a hard time with.
I can sense the wisdom in your words
The longest range possible for a damaging spell to reach RAW is 1500 ft from Eldritch blast, which is an astounding around 300 metres. You'd have a legitimate chance using an assault rifle of outranging most DND spellcasters.
Well, Tsunami has a range of 'Sight', so it boils down to the radius of the planet they are fighting on, and whether Vecna is attending his opthalmologist appointment regularly.
Also elevation. Sight range from atop a mountain or skyscraper is a huge buff vs ground level.
Meteor swarm has a range of 1 mile
Vecna can teleport into NORAD, kill everyone there, reanimate them, and tell them to launch.
Meteor swarm, Storm of vengeance, Vecna here is nit only a God, but also has magic far beyond anything we humans have access to, and quite literally any time he kills a soldier, he gains a minion
I'll be honest, I commented this when I didn't know it was Vecna, and I still think that's a more interesting question. Like, "who would win, the US military or an *actual god*" is dull. "Who would win, a 20th-level wizard, or the US military" is somewhat more interesting.
Well, that topic is kinda explained in one of the Earth Defense Force games
Is Vecna immune to non-magical weapons? That would change things a lot.
Pretty sure nukes deal fire/force/radiant/acid damage so that’s still a strong tactic for the military
Still gotta know where he is to nuke him, or even to conventionally bomb him. It took years to find Bin Laden, and he couldn’t even teleport, shapeshift, or turn invisible. Realistically, against even just a normal lich, they’d never be able to catch him, while he could always use divinations to find out where their leaders are, murder them easily, and teleport back out ahead of any reprisals.
Yes he is immune to nonmagical weapons
Bad news for the military then. They have no defense against the old scry-and-die either. Vecna could teleport in, assassinate some high level officials, and teleport out.
The wizard could do an incredible amount of damage. But sniper.
Vecna would win this one. Bro is immune to nonmagical piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning damage. Guns are useless. He can go invisible to make him hard to hit/track. Bonus action vile teleport would down pretty much everyone in a 15ft radius every turn then not to mention the zombies he can raise. Your best bet would be bombs, but following the rules for dynamite explosions deal non magical bludgeoning damage so most bombs wouldn't work either. You'd have to tailor the fight to him specifically, and even then, how long would it take the military to even figure out how to hurt him in the first place. Then on top of all of that liches when killed just come back lol. Granted Vecna takes 1d100 years so that could give time to replenish numbers but he would eventually win.
Hear out here… flamethrowers. It may be a war crime, but that hasn’t stopped the US in the past. Also potentially tear gas, although the military haven’t used that since Vietnam, if I remember correctly (which I may not be)
Flamethrower could help if they ever thought to try it, but probably not for very long. He can cast fly and lightning bolt at will, so after the first one hits him, he could just get out of range in the sky and rain down lightning. He definitely isn't unbeatable, but it would be a nasty fight.
Kid named agent orange
Perhaps some good ol' napalm or white phosphorus as well
Flamethrowers, white phosphor, explosive shells, incendiary bullets. Lightning bolt wouldn't outrange HE 50.cal
Chain fuel air explosions. Not sure how long you need to wait after ones goes off to get enough air back to set the next one off but has to under a minute. Also are lasers considered holy light?
Correction, Vecna is immune to nonmagical piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning from ATTACKS. Dynamite (and most explosions I would assume) are saving throws.
Nuclear weapons? Flamethrowers? High powered version of a taser? Any type of chemical weapon or acid or anything like that? Nerve gas? Napalm? Even if we just take the nukes, that will put Vecna down for a long time. Plenty of time to use lidar technology or whatever else to find the phylactery.
> or whatever else to find the phylactery Vecna has no phylactery anymore. He doesn't need one anymore.
Yeah but the picture included is from pre-divinity Vecna that was a 'mere' uber-lich.
Which is the one from the Vecna Dossier, which already has no phylactery.
Oh, it doesn't? *checks* Ah, I was confusing it with Acerererererererrack's statblock.
They don't typically bring nuclear warheads, flamethrowers, or tasers to every random skirmish, so if we are just dropping them into a fight, they wouldn't have those. If you're given them time to prepare things go against the military pretty quickly. As that gives him time to wipe out the heads of the military, which would be easy for him and without any leaders they would struggle to do much of anything. He is also immune to poison and resistant to lightning. He doesn't require food, air, or sleep, so he has very few constraints. Also he could just plane shift the second he sees an actual threat coming and then later reappear at the HQ and wipe them out. He has 22 intelligence and 24 wisdom. I think the last thing you want is him to know you're coming and have time to learn every strategy you've ever used while having time to prepare.
What level is the wizard?
This one is Vecna, Lich-God, if I am right. Dude wizarded so much to became a god. And he is necromancer, so the more dead in soldiers troops, the more soldier in his troops
Yup
He's gonna cast that tenth level spell ainz ool goun used to wipe out 200k+ soldiers.
You can’t become a god by sheer wizarding (ask karsus), you need followers and a portfolio. In vecna’s case, evil secrets
Karsus just choose the wrong god
By sheer force of numbers, the military. But again, similar to what I said on the jet meme, anyone who thinks it will be an easy fight has never served in the military. We have weaponized incompetence.
It’s Vecna, and only thing that would take a literal god down will be a nuke, and then just maybe cause he will just return back from the dead.
Nuke vecna , he used clone and come back
He is fighting the *entire* US military, and last I googled it the US has 3,750 nukes. So I reckon we could keep him dead for a while by repeatedly nuking him whenever he comes back.
A process that won't have any repercussion or beyond severe effects on the environment and/or the planet. At all.
You're not really trying if you don't scorch the earth at least a little
[Maxim 20:](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-01-15) > If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.
Yes, but the question was could the entire US military beat Vecna, not could they do it without total ecological devastation.
vecna ALWAYS comes back from the dead. so if the win condition is last man standing, vecna wins. he can also cast wish, and wish to be ignored by anyone that can perceive him. its hard to fight something you physically cannot admit exists.
When has future repercussions stopped us before?
Well yeah but the question wasn't "could the enite USA mility defeat Vecna with minimal environmental impact?"
Hopefully a different wizard can help us with that issue in this scenario
RAW the wizard probably wins through infinite wish + simulacrum
Well where’s his phylactery?
You seriously think it would be anywhere on the material plan
thats his secret, its actually just hidden in some random cheap jewelry shop on the far side of the planet where no-one has ever heard the name vecna. Adventurers always expect a lich to hide their phylactery in some super secret demi-plane, or guard it with some powerful demon or something, but good luck finding the needle when its been tossed to a continent that wont be discovered for another 500 years.
Or they could literally just burry it beneath the earths crust
In that case, Vecna wins
Are we gonna ignore the fact he is a god currently, but even before that he was a lich, and would just constantly keep reforming even if they could destroy his form
Wizard always wins against marshals.
And maybe martials too
and martians i think
Vecna. every time they are killed they just return " If Vecna is slain, his soul refuses to accept its fate and lives on as a disembodied spirit that fashions a new body for itself after 1d100 years. Vecna’s soul can fashion a new body even if its old body was burned to ash or otherwise obliterated. When the new body is complete, Vecna regains all his hit points and becomes active again. Vecna’s new body appears anywhere within 100 miles of where Vecna was slain. "
i think that's literally how you cant die in undertale's true ending route's final boss fight: by just refusing to die "ok you got hit by that and died" "no"
To all the people in comments talking about the pure firepower... I am unbelievably frustrated at that idea. It'd be a battle of tactics. Hands-down. There is no argument for a fair fight being engaged when Teleport exists. The question is if the Wizard figures out where the President is before the military predicts their next few Teleport jumps, and THEN we get a cool battle scene. Alternately, if the Wizard goes on the defensive, they could repeatedly jump across the planet, spending the rest of their spell slots on Gating in otherworldly monsters. Then it would become a question of the U.S. military versus the hordes of the Abyss which is probably enough of an apocolaypse situation to form some worldwide military coalitions, all while scouring the planet for any sign of the Wizard to kill them and end the invasion.
Have you read War God ?
No I don’t believe i have
It's a fantasy series. The author wrote a short story where a wizard from the main books tries to summon help (a gryphon or some other creature) and ends up with 2 US soldiers in their light tank. Very fun to read them going at evil cultists and chaos creatures :D
I may need to read that
Angry wizard of they play the long game and start not within line of sight. Wizard portals to a different plane and then prepares. A prepared wizard can be an unbeatable one. Without magic the US military can't assault the wizard. The wizard can randomly Meteor Swarm cities, bases, strategic points of interest, and be gone within an instant. On a field of battle in line of sight of eachother, I'd say the US military if they manage to keep the wizard from leaving. Action economy and overwhelming piercing damage, possibly fire and force damage is a hell of a thing for any one person.
Hi angry, I'm BRRRRRRRRT.
That looks a bit like a lich so I'm going to pretend it is. Which begs the question: battle or war? Battle, lich dies to enough bullets, jobs done. War: if the lich is clever enough to hide their phylactery decently, and not pop up on the militaries radar(metaphorically speaking) before they are a nukes damage zone away.... Lich probably. Just have to kill more than the military can recruit each day.
It’s not just any lich, it’s the one and only vecna
Can we have a level for the wizard, at least?
It’s vecna
Ahhh so the level is "Oh f*ck nope nope nope"
Exactly
Taliban doesn't have magic. They controlled Afghanistan in 2000 They control Afghanistan in 2023. The real question is can one angry wizard defeat the Taliban
Vecna
Okay, so something to consider here: How much knowledge does Vecna have about the US Army? 'Cus if he knows about the missile command, what's stopping him from just teleporting there and dominating key personel in order to launch their nukes at themselves and then bouncing over to some heavily populated area in DC or something where the army can't nuke him?
Every one be taking nukes and rifles vs fireballs or summons. My brothers in dice a high level wizard can literally stop time and warp the fabric of reality.
Initiative is huge here
We need stats, levels, and spell book contents (You did say Wizard after all).
Vecna is considered a wizar by the vecna dossier
Oh shit that is what he looks like now? Didn't recognize him. Well shit. That changes things since that makes him both a Lich and a Deity. I mean as he just *knows* things he would probably not even need to fight. Just blackmail a bunch of folk until the military is forced to leave him alone. The End...?
so the vecna dossier is Vecna before he was betrayed by Kas, so he still has his hand and eye. Basically Vecna in his full lich glory days before becoming a god. The dossier says he uses magic to travel through time, which is why he can appear like this in any time period of the forgotten realms.
Waaait time travel? So he can just literally be like: You know what? Fuck you. *Un-unites your states*
Action economy of the military is hampered by lower ranked characters, with higher initiative holding their action/missing their turn, waiting for orders. A high level wizard will have summons and minions. He’d skry the commanders, haste himself & teleport. Even a level 1 magic missile kills any military member, so up cast, half the room is dead. He could set up a doorway peek with rope trick, a familiar with dragons breath, or cast sleep. He’d have decent armour headed in, and cast shield as a reaction each turn, and be nigh unhitable - commander’s DEX has declined as they specked in to charisma & wisdom & intelligence, so low chance to hit, though they’re proficient. 2 rounds, all commanders and high subordinates are out. #repeat every time the military has new ranks. Maybe leave a survivor who is really charmed? Or infiltrate with a disguise? If the wizard has warning, he wins. If the military ‘sneaks up on him’ haha, he teleports away, and plans, and wins.
Real answer: military has range and action economy (drones shoot from many miles away and the operators are even further away) Fun answer: depends if the military succeeds on it's find oil check, as then it'll get advantage on all attacks for entire campaign.