>You find a small wooden box
>Inside this box is a stone that blazes with the brightness of a thousand suns
>>43875325
I'll probably have to read in Braille from now on.
>>43875325
Do i lose my eyes instantly, or do i roll for it?
>Swallow the stone
What would happen?
>>43875385
Well, you'd get fucking blinded for one.
>>43875325
Not that you need to open the box. The brightness of a thousand suns would shine through that thin wooden veil like cellophane.
Strictly speaking OP, we never found the box. We walked into a room and found eternal darkness, eventually realizing not only are we blind, but our skin is peeling off from the worst sunburn in history.
Given there's no ozone separating us from this luminescence, I expect the solar wind to kill us from radiation poisoning in the next hour as well. Assuming the photons haven't already ablated and energized the surrounding room into a rudimentary solar wind already.
I get that there's no heat. Hell, you may even have limited the frequency to visible light. But light of that *amplitude* is still more thermal energy than we can handle. It's going to start generating plasma just from destabilizing the electrons being bombarded by that many photons.
>physics, ruining D&D since 1978
>>43875325
masturbate with it
>>43875469
>Magic! Ruining physics and fucking scientists since forever.
>>43875325
So, funny thing about light: It's photons.
A roughly snooker ball sized stone that emmits each second a thousand fold the number of photons emmited by the whole sun in a second, not only would destroy the eyes, but the face and in fact, everything in the path of it's light when open. Assuming this wood box magically stops this mega laser of sunlight, and I know what's inside without having to open it, I could, somehow, cut a hole in the box, and the use the box material to make a flap to close and open the hole. Link that flap to a trigger mechanism and I have the most powerful weapon in the setting. I can probably kill gods with my new laser pistol.
>>43875325
Now I just need to find spacious enough cavern and I can make my own Menzoberranzan.
With Blackjack.
And hookers.And patriarchy!
>>43875513
What if it's sorcery and doesn't work like that?
>>43875325
Pretty sure the entire setting dies instantly.
>>43875325
>Character is a vampire
Gonna have a bad time
>>43875589
Then he has a super fucking powerful laser pointer to annoy the shit out of the gods with.
Assuming it's not like what people are saying and kills everything, I sell it to Marsellus Wallace.
>>43875325
Toss it into the uinderdark
>>43875325
I PICK UP MY STONE.
>>43875658
Well...Or at least I have a blinding weapon and a hell of a good one. Seems like I can't lose. Supergun, laser pointer, blinding gun. All equally good on my book.
>>43875325
That means I'm blind now.
0/10 shit gm
>>43875325
Nowhere in the OP does it say you actually open the box. You could just know what's inside.
In which case you basically hold the power to fry the planet on a whim.
>>43875510
Well, regardless of whether or not that stone actually has the properties of a sun (which I'm assuming it doesn't, only having the brightness of ten-thousand of them), it's still probably producing an awful fuckton of heat because of all that light.
Whoever opens that box may as well be incinerated from all that heat energy.
>>43875325
I shoot my NPC party member riding in the back seat in the head by accident while arguing with the other player about what they call cheeseburgers in france.
>>43875471
And then you will come with the force of a thousand suns
>>43875717
Now it's the underlight.
>>43875965
I don't even want to know what kind of abjurations they put on the box to keep it from exploding.
>>43876386
If the rock radiated through the box you wouldn't exist to find it in the first place. Thus the box has to somehow be able to shut off/filter the light.
Maybe it's just superwood.
>>43875965
You'd be incinerated before you even got close enough to the box.
>>43876598
Either way, I safely dispose of the rock and study the box to see what kind of super invincible fantasy material this shit's made of and make armor with it.
>>43875325
>New power source
>put in water
>turn steam turbines
>industrial revolution
>>43875325
Dump that shit in the Negative Energy plane and book it.
Or the plane of shadows.
>>43878761
Fucking Xaosmen, I tell you.
Blast it with piss
Now do we know if it blazes with the power of ten-thousand suns at all times? maybe it's amplitude is adjustable and it only releases amounts of said suns at a time like adjusting the pressure of a hose?
Is it radioactive?
Dont look at it.
>>43875965
Even if it doesn't produce heat, it would burn out the eyesockets of everyone present to opening the box, and maybe give everyone skin cancer.
>>43875325
Earlier I was trying to find some reference material to help me figure out what the maximum lumen value could possibly be in an earth-like atmosphere, but after reading >>43876192 I realized, photons do exert force. Radiation pressure is a thing.
So putting aside the nature of how the brightness is generated, would the radiation pressure of that light be consequential? According to an article on quora.com, the pressure of the radiation at the surface of the Sun is 0.266 Pascals, and 1 Pascal is 1 Newton per square meter. The Sun's surface area is 6.09 × 10^12 kilometers squared. So that's 6.09 x 10^18 square meters.
So 0.266 newtons per square meter, times 6.09 x 10^18 square meters, equals ~1.62 x 10^18 Newtons. That's 164 quadrillion times the force of gravity on earth.
And this stone blazes with a brightness one-thousand times more.
And it is being contained, within a small wooden box.
Think about that for a bit. That's some epic level PC nonsense. Makes me imagine someone building a character purely around the idea of one day proving that Hephaestus, the creator of Pandora's Box [or Jar, whatever] which was able to contain all of humanity's troubles and ills, as well as the power of hope, was an utterly shit craftsman and should go apologize to the Sintians for having wasted their fucking time.
>>43875325
Honestly I'm more impressed with the box at this point
>>43875878
Did that actually work out for them?
>>43875965
>Whoever opens that box may as well be incinerated from all that heat energy.
If opened on Earth, *Jupiter* would be destroyed. The sun itself might be destroyed.
>>43881096
So what you're saying is that to make a fantasy nuke all we need is enough light and candles?
>>43881529
Yeah. We're going to need about 100 sextillion candles and about that many greater shrink and binding spells.
>>43881404Yup. Spider-man gussed that it was called a nullifer for a reason, rather than an annihilator or atomizer or destructo-beam or what have you. I forget the details, but it basically leveled the playing field, and so Galactus and the Avengers then they competed in various contests and games to resolve matters, including a baseball match.
Marvel Adventures may have been aimed at kids, but it had some really fun comic line.
>>43881529
Er, not quite. I do not believe there could feasibly be enough candles produced on an earth-sized planet to create a fantasy 'light' nuke. Though I suppose I haven't exactly run any numbers to support that presumption...
>>43875325
well i'm glad i have a super weapon inside a magic wodden box that can contain it.
that much light coming out of such a small object would instantly ignite everything around it for a very large distance.
build a polarizing tube with a shutter, enchant said tube to match the box, make the inside of the box reflective (with a spell of some kind so you don't have to open it), drill a hole in the box the size of the polarizing tube, sacrifice as many homeless orphans as needed to get the tube affixed into the hole and sealed in.
i now have a death laser
>>43875469
but there would be heat
not a thousand sun levels of heat but enough to vaporize you.
heat is the vibration of molecules that result in friction that results in heat. light causes the vibration of molecules if its frequency matches its resonance pattern. this is how microwaves work. this thing however if it produces that kind of light i would just assume it vaporizes everything it comes in contact with. ESPECIALLY if it comes out of an object with a surface area you might possibly fit in your hand, the smaller the surface area the more INTENSE that light is going to be the closer you get to it.
I think the thousand suns thing is an example of exaggeration guys. It just means it's really really bright. Jesus. Obviously if it were as bright as a thousand suns it would mean all kinds of bad shit.
>>43875325
Donate it to the local school
>>43881988
>It's not an exaggeration.
>Some wizard sat down and figured out how to make Light stack.
>Proceeded to Permanency god knows how many Light spells onto a single stone.
>When asked why, shrugged shoulders, went back to casting.
>>43882071
mother of the gods
i'm doing this as my next wizard
but not before i build my super weapon container.
>>43882170
You have to use some kind of darkness effect to counteract the light. Then figure out a way to move it to the moon and weaponize it as a beam. Then do nothing with it and move onto your next project (creating a race of hyper intelligent bovines who use hyper stupid humans to produce milk). Leave the moon base and weapon there and make sure you tell just one bard about the fantastic god weapon on the moon.
>>43882389
Also to actually use the weapon accurately you'd need some kind of scrying apparatus to determine the location of the target factoring in the movement and rotation of the planet, the moon and the speed of the beam.
>>43882909
I would imagine that that would go in the L4 and L5 Lagrange points, because putting it on the moon with the beam would be too easy.
>>43875325
>I open the box
>the earth is immediately reduced to ash and every life is extinguished
>>43883554
You did the right thing
>>43875664
What does Marcellus Wallace look like?
>>43883740
He's black.
>>43883868
We're all black now since some dumbass opened the box with the rock of a thousand suns in it.
>>43876237
>>43876192
Underrated posts
>>43875469
I'm not sure that's true. The stone is also much closer than the Sun, so the solid angle subtended by the observer's eye is vastly greater. This means that the luminance of the stone can actually be much lower, and therefore so can its actual power.
Quick WA calculation says that the angle of the Sun subtended by a pupil is 4.5*10^-23 of that subtended by a 10 cm stone at 1 m viewing distance, so given 1000x higher luminous flux gives a total power something like 4.5*10^-20 of the Sun. This is "only" about 10 megawatts, assuming it's radiating in all directions evenly.
So, this isn't a nuke. You're still going to go blind instantly and probably burst into flames, but there are power plants that put out more than this.
>>43876237
>>43885221
you are using the light of the sun as it hits our atmosphere and then reaches sea level.
that is not the brightness of a single sun, that is the brightness seen by us on earth.
the actual brightness of the sun is measured in its TOTAL luminosity which is measured in watts
our sun puts out 3.84X10^26 Watts of electromagnetic energy.
multiple that by a thousand and you would have the energy output that stone generates.
now take that energy emission and divide it by what ever surface area this stone currently has and you know the exact amount of light energy that is being issued out off the surface of that stone a sec.
our sun also emits radiation in all spectra of light though the light in the lower regions is far more intense you might be able to find some material that doesn't have the resonance sequence of the light of our sun.
>>43885852
That's what "brightness" means; it's the perception of luminance. Things that are darker are less bright.
>>43885852
I don't know about you, but if someone tells me that something shines with the brightness of 1000 suns, I would rather expect it to be 1000x brighter than staring into the Sun.
You have to use a convoluted definition of "brightness of X suns" roughly as silly as the Truly Immovable Rod interprets "immovable" to get something with the luminosity of 1000 suns.
>>43886075
actually mine is the scientific definition of how brightness would be identified its the same way we categorize light bulbs and so forth.
>>43886023
no it isn't
source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminosity
>>43886123
I counter with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightness
>Brightness is an attribute of visual perception in which a source appears to be radiating or reflecting light.[1] In other words, brightness is the perception elicited by the luminance of a visual target.
"luminance" being candelas per square meter, and what I was calculating up there. It is also equivalent, roughly, to apparent magnitude in astronomy.
>This is a subjective attribute/property of an object being observed and one of the color appearance parameters of color appearance models. Brightness refers to an absolute term and should not be confused with Lightness.[2]
Never change
>>43882071
>light spell is eauivalent to a 60 W light bulb
>3.945*10^29 60 W lighbulbs is brightness of sun
>20th level wizard can cast permanency 6 times a day
>takes 1.80*10^28 years to create stone
Totally worth it. As for cotnainers a sigle box with a permanent darkness spell, which negates even magical light
>>43886252
Or a couple million times, if you're just happy making it a thousand times brighter than noon sunlight.
>>43886179
let me quote mine real quick
>>luminosity is related to the brightness, which is the luminosity of an object in a given spectral region
your brightness is limited entirely to red blue yellow for one thing
your source also admits to the fact that its an entirely subjective way to measure "brightness" which you quoted for me, thank you very much. this makes it impossible to actually measure brightness this way to any reliable degree.
luminosity is a direct measure of a sources brightness that disregards the distance you are from the source. yours is dependent on the relativistic outlooks that will result in conflicting information.
a flood light, a football field away, is just as bright as if you are standing right in front of it,
just because you are not perceiving the same amount of photons due to distance doe not make this any less true.
>>43886252
A spell slot of higher level can be used to cast a lower level spell so the wizard can cast way more than 6 per day.
>>43886495
how many?
>>43886535
Don't have the handbook here, I imagine 6 slot per level so 24 per day plus bonus slot for high charisma.
So we can conclude that a cult of light-worshipping wizards had something to do with this right?
>>43875325
I eat it.
>>43875325
Fuck, Feanor's going to kill me for having this.
>>43875325
I Iron Heart Surge the effect, I have murdered the sun orb!
>>43886403
>this makes it impossible to actually measure brightness this way to any reliable degree.
Actually, it's extremely precise. There's been very good scientific work on the precise response and sensitivity of the visual system for many decades; there's a standard empirical function which weights a given amount of light with a given spectrum by weighting its energy according to the human eye's sensitivity to various wavelengths. If you've ever seen figures describing a display or light source in lumens, candelas, or candlepower, you've seen precise measures of this quantity.
Anyway, illuminance (or radiance, the non-weighted version, which measures watts per square meter per solid angle) isn't subjective. It's an objective, non-observer-dependent property of the surface, which describes how much light will illuminate any object it casts light on and, based on distance, how intense that light will be.
Personally, I interpret "blazes with the brightness of a thousand suns" to mean that it appears, to the guy opening it, a thousand times brighter than the Sun. Or even, possibly, that it emits a light a thousand times more intense than the Sun - that its surface emits 1000x the light flux of the surface of the Sun. But if you want to say it emits a total luminous power a thousand times that of the Sun - that it would only be 1000x brighter if observed from 1 AU away - that's fine, honestly. Like the Truly Immovable Rod, it's silly and fun.
But don't go around misunderstanding photometry.
>>43888729
I'm sorry, it just really bothers my autism when people get pedantic about fantasy stuff and interpret it in a "precise" "realistic" fashion to produce absurd results, so they can show how clever they are ...
...when they're not even being pedantic correctly, and a more correct interpretation would lead to less absurd results.
People who think they're very clever for thinking of the Truly Immovable Rod and that "Cum with the force of 1000 suns" cap also get my shitter swollen.
I open the box at night. Maybe it's a solar amplifier.
>>43888729
> that it would only be 1000x brighter if observed from 1 AU away
How dangerous is this amount of brightness?
>>43881988
Common, sunlight is only 98 000 lux at sea level.
1000 suns would be another 98.000.000 lux.
I tape it to the roof of my greenhouse and produce the greatest flowers ever grown.
>>43875325
>spontaneous vacuum collapses create a blackhole due to the sheer electromagnetic energy
>The world is soon destroyed
>>43875385
Your shit now glows forevermore.
Every time you shit.... boom. glowing shit. It looks glorious to any adventurer that isn't aware that you shit glorious lumps of light.... they try to grab it. their hands now glow and they smell like shit.
>>43875805
The stone kills you all.
>>43891588
You're one of THOSE dms.
>>43886589
Bored anon being bored, decided to do some maths. Kinda. Bear with me.
Let's assume 20th Level Wizard, and for sake of starting edition wars, 3.5 edition because d20srd is within easy access of my cell phone and I'm too lazy to actually crack open a manual.
So! Let's further assume for argument's sake, Human with 18 in INT at 1st level. That would give us, what, 23 INT if level-up stat increases were spent towards it? (Been a while, someone check me - 5 stat-UPS by Level 20, right?)
Anyway, rolling right along. Magic Items up in this bitch. First off, Tome of Clear Thought +5, aw yeah. +5 Inherent to INT, raising it to 28. Let's add on a Headband of Intellect for +6 Enhancement as well, make a nice 34 INT score. Not too shabby. I'm sure there's other things that'll add more, but this works for what I have access to.
So! At Level 20, a Wizard has 4 Spells per Day in each tier, from 0-9, and with Light being a 0-level spell, that means we have 40 uses available. Let's make him an Evocation specialist, for an extra spell per tier, for a nice even 50 slots. BUT WAIT, we also have bonus spells, which - with an INT of 34 - comes to a total of 21 more slots over tiers 1-9 to use, giving a sum total of 71 castings of Light per day.
However, we're also trying to make the spell permanent, so we need to factor in Permanence, which takes away from those calculations a bit. Permanence is a 5th-level spell, which means with all our relevant bonuses (still using the 'specialist' bonus spell at each tier for Light), we can prepare and cast it a whopping 29 times per day at 20th level. Subtracting that from our daily Light spells leaves us with a total of 42 Light Spells prepared, although with only 29 being usable for our purposes it really means we have some 13 unused slots for other things as we see fit. Whatever.
The point is, our wizard now enchants a stone with the light intensity equivalent of a 1,740w bulb each day. Because wizard.
>>43891686
It makes my dick genuinely hard whenever somebody does the math for this sort of thing.
>>43875325
Hey, I own that exact same chest
>>43892480
Your gratitude and erection are what make it all worth it, anon.
>>43892765
I'm serious. I got wood from the idea of the "peasant propelled rail gun", but THIS sort of thing gives me polished mahogany.
>>43893009
Well then. In the interest of both encouraging horrible puns regarding wood-related euphemisms, and in feeding my own personal need for positive affirmation from random faceless strangers on the internet, let me pander further to your fetish.
First off, it occurs to me that we're starting with an unfortunate, if understandable, misconception as to our best choice of tools. While yes, the Light spell is the first most would default to when thinking of creating light-based effects, there is another much more well-suited for our purposes - Dancing Lights, which is still a 0-Level spell, and also creates torch-bright illumination, but has two advantages for our situation over Light: One, it can already be made Permanent without further effort, and Two, it creates up to four torchlight orbs with each casting. This effectively quadruples the output of our enchantment on the stone for the same effort.
But hey, we can do a bit better, right? How's this, then: The 4th-tier spell 'Mnemonic Enhancer' allows our wizard to prepare additional spells, or cast a spell without expending it's use. Now, normally it only works for up to 3rd-tier spells or below, but here is where we get fun - the Metamagic Rod of Empowering allows up to three spells per day to be cast as if under the effect of the Empower feat, which raises all variable effects to 1.5x efficiency (rounded up). Since 'up to' can be interpreted as a variable, we could reasonably go with having this raise the tier of spells that the Enhancer works on to 5th-tier, which would in turn allow us to prepare even MORE Permanency spells.
(Cont'd)
>>43894677
(Field was too long for one post, so here's the rest.)
How many? Well, between being Level 20 and INT-based bonuses, our Wizard has a total of 7 tier-4 spell slots available. However, we only have 13 total 'free' spells per day, and for each Permanency, we'll need a Dancing Lights - the Enhancer takes the place of the Permanency, but overall nets us with an additional 6 perma-castings of our spell. And one free spot for whatever the hell we want. Create Food, maybe, this shit's got to be hungry work.
So! We now have a grand total of 35 Permanent Dancing Light spells per day, which at four globes per casting, gives us a whopping 140 globes of 60w-equivalent light all bound into our rock, which after a single day shines with the power of an 8,400w bulb.
Talk about shine bright like a diamond.
>>43894702
I'm intrigued. at a certain point can a light become bright enough to be PHYSICALLY harmful to a person? not just their senses, but to their entire body?
>>43875355
>>43875357
Also your face probably melted off.
That's a strong box. It really should be glowing itself. Is it made of dark matter?
So me and most of my city instantly vaporizes? With any luck the lid closes when the box lands a few miles from here.
>>43886179
The problem with your theory is that "brightness of a thousand suns" is a very specific descriptor.
Op said nothing about the brightness being dependent on its distance from you, or its angle in the sky, or any aspect of its location near you. In otherwords, the object would have the brighness of a thousand suns if it was near you, or if it was at the center of the solar system. Which means 'brightness' here must refer to luminosity.
>>43894998
What do you think sunburn is? Light is energy, and too much of any energy is bad for just about anything.
>>43894702
What about if we used a cleric instead of a wizard for Divine Metamagic dickery? What if a deranged cleric of Pelor sought to create the most brilliant of suns as a gift to his god?
>>43894998
Well...yes. We call them 'lasers'. Also, earlier in the thread there was mention of such things as photon energy and radiation, which would likely be quite uncomfortable as well. However, an exact answer is a bit outside my area of expertise.
What I do know, however, is that with roughly 5 petawatts of power, we would be able to illuminate the moon to the same intensity as the sun does. Which we would be able to achieve in roughly 595,238 sets of castings, or approximately 1,630 years.
Totally worth it. Dick carvings on the moon, here we come.
>>43875513
You know what is even better?
It is not just photons. It is photons with enough energy to ionize. In another word, radiation.
>>43895243
Hmm. Intriguing idea. Give me a bit to run the numbers.
>>43875325
Ran a simulation
The Sun's luminosity was set to 1000 times itself. All other variables scaled up proportionally.
Here it is eating Mars.
>>43895324
You best close the box then anon.
>>43895243
Hmm. Slight problem with running the maths - unless I'm missing something in reading the SRD, a cleric prepares metamagic the same say a wizard does, which wouldn't really help that much on initial observation. Plus, Dancing Lights is an Arcane spell, meaning it isn't on the Cleric's spell list, which in turn means we'd be limited to Light at best, which is again only 1/4 as awesome a plan. Hmm. More research is required, I think.
>>43891686
I laughed too hard and can't get up. Send help.
>>43895444
Are you familiar with Divine Metamagic cheese? If not forget the whole plan.
>>43895480
I'm not, unfortunately. However, if it's something that can be quickly summarized, I'd be keen to add it into my calculations.
Which are currently expanding to cover the cost-to-benefit ratio of adding a second wizard, specialized in Transmutation, for the Mnemonic Enhancers and Permanencies.
>>43895538
Assembly line of wizards?
How many wizards can you recruit to make a 8000 w permanent light bulb per day?
How many wizard sweat shops would you need in China?
>>43895573
OR just to make one big laser bomb.
>>43895623
Locate city bomb
>ITT: WIZARDS
>>43875325
Can I use it to power a death ray?
Alternatively a dildo?
>>43894702
8,400 wats a day
>>43885852
i like this guys more and it seems to be a more accurate standard for measuring brightness.
so 3.84x10^26 times 1000
for one lone wizard
doing this guys plan
it would take roughly ( i rounded up) 1.3x10^23 YEARS to make this stone
this shit is a god level item or was made by a HUGE cult of wizards with nothing better to do but pass a pretty rock around all day.
NOW
we need to calculate the time frame it takes one wizard to cast all these permanency spells and then based on that we can determine the maximum number of wizards that can work on the stone in a day. using said information we can get the minimum amount of time needed to actually make the damn thing.
i assume the wizard has to have line of sight or be touching the damn stone to cast on it so we have to figure out how many we get casting at the same time and how long to empty their respective spell slots.
this of course is not taking into effect any time quackery spells. if it is we would have to have a whole separate set of wizards working in conjunction with the light imbuing wizards
think if we had enough wizards we could knock this thing out in an afternoon?
>>43896359
I suggest using a box with magical darkness to contain and transport.
>>43896507
well yes we have established that for this rock to even be in a wooden box that box would have to be able to contain it without disintegrating
>>43896756
Any way to cast dancing lights by touch?
