[PF/3.5] How to handle mail

[the clumsy bard]

So how do people handle sending messages at earlier levels?

I mean there are spells, but how do normal people without spells send messages?

I have a player who sent a carrier pigeon in game recently, but I have no idea how long that would take game wise :smallconfused:

I mean if I know a town is 10 days away via horse can we assume it is the same via carrier pigeon, so would a person have to wait 20 days for a return message?

[Jack_Simth]

Sending pidgeons is done in an ouchie manner.

You raise a pidgeon, then ship it in a cage to the person whom you want to be able to send you a message.

When that person wants to send you a message, they write a really small note on a tiny scrap of parchment, affix it to the pidgeon's leg, and then let the pidgeon go.

The pidgeon then flies home - to the place you raised it. You then pluck the message off of the pidgeon's leg, put the pidgeon in a cage, and ship it back the long way.

Per the Raven description: "The statistics presented here can describe most nonpredatory birds of similar size. "

So the pidgeon travels at a fly speed of 40, and ignores terrain. If you can get there on horse in ten days, the pidgeon can probably get there in four to eight days, depending.

And you won't get a return message to a mobile spot that way. The only way to do a reply is by other means, or a different pidgeon that was similarly trained... which will go to a particular, prepared point (it's home cage).

Unless you want to hand-waive away some breeding bits so you can simply tell it to take a message somewhere, drop it off, and return (which isn't out of line in a fantasy environment), they're faster than sending a letter by a courier, and much less convenient (short messages, very time consuming to set up).

[Talentless]

Carrier pigeons can travel far far FAR faster than a horse.

You can even do some math to figure it out yourself though.

A horse travels at 50 feet per round according to the MM.
1 round is around 6 seconds of time. there are 10 rounds in a Minute.
A horse travels at 500 Feet per Minute or 30000 Feet per Hour (5.6 MPH).
One assumes that a courier will only travel 8 hours a day.
240000 Feet in a day then. (45 Miles)
10 days requires 2400000 feet of movement according to the movement rules assumed here. (454 miles)

A Pigeon has a fly speed of around 60 Feet per Round. Not excessively faster than a Horse, but one has to account for flight versus taking a road, straight line versus curve.

Without the Map you use to judge this, we can't tell if the straight line is faster, however, we also know that a flying bird is not limited to the constraints of a Human rider, so it can fly for 16 hours a day (our assumption for this.)

60 Feet Per Round
600 Feet Per Minute
36000 Feet Per Hour
576000 Feet Per Day.

2400000 Feet to Travel(Assuming the horse had also been going in a strait line) divided by 576000 feet per day. 4 Days for the bird to reach town.


One can modify the hours of travel each day to suit the road/climate/any other factor the DM wants, which is why I used some simple basic assumptions.

However, as pigeons are "prey" birds, it has a chance of being hunted and killed at any point in transit outside of its starting point and intended destination.

Also, due to the limitations of carrier birds, without using magic or a Familiar/Animal Companion, the response would have to be delivered by Horse Courier due to the way Carrier Pigeons work, you take one from its home with you, and send it back to its home with the message. It can't be sent out to find someone specific out in the wilderness.



Not sure how much help that wall of math and assumptions is, but Carrier Pigeons, when they work, are much faster than a horse, and can be assumed to take around 3/4 of a round trip courier message does to perform a similar round trip message. 1/2 the time if someone one on the other end can use a spell to target it to send it back to the PC personally, or if it was only a one way message. (Discounting a 5-10% chance of the bird not reaching in the first place, ranging higher as the danger of the wilderness goes up. There is a good reason multiple copies of the same message got sent from multiple birds whenever possible.)


/edit The person above does have a good point about the Raven's MM Entry, I used a Hawk's fly speed because i have seen pigeons can fly really fast when they want to. However, the speed they use is up to the DM because they aren't particularly statted out in the MM

[Jack_Simth]

/edit The person above does have a good point about the Raven's MM Entry, I used a Hawk's fly speed because i have seen pigeons can fly really fast when they want to. However, the speed they use is up to the DM because they aren't particularly statted out in the MMHonestly, I figured a frightened bird is probably Hustling (double move), or maybe even running (quadruple move). So a bird that's scared? It's probably going 80 feet in a round if it's not going in a straight line, 160 if it is. Which... probably matches up fairly well with what you've seen (or at least, well enough for D&D modelling).

[BowStreetRunner]

Apparently, carrier pigeons have been trained to handle 100 mile (160 km) round-trip flights twice a day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_pigeon). Yeah, I know - it's wikipedia. I don't have access to the NRC report quoted as a source, but I have found several other sources with similar statements - in fact 50mph speeds seem to be within the capabilities of such creatures.

As for PF/3.5 rules, I don't think I've seen stats for a pigeon. But I don't see why you couldn't rule that carrier pigeons can do the job twice as fast as a horse - after all, the pigeon is not only faster but can travel in straight lines.

[alchemyprime]

Well, I have a courier's guild. In a town, it's 1cp for a letter, 5cp for same day delivery. To another town, it's 2cp for the next town over, 7cp for same day.

If you're going past that, there are various ways.
For an animal message, there is a 60 gold charge for a magically enhanced one. 10gp for a plain pigeon (typically used by news outlets).
Then we have the Ten Minnits and the Instant Letters, as well as the Chirps.
Ten Minnits - Messages sent by wire. Called so because your letter gets to the office at the other end in ten minutes or less, barring accidents. They tend to charge based on where you are sending, but it averages about a gold every 10 miles.
Instant Letters are another matter - they are only between major participating cities (all Capital Cities for Altieriet, as well as the major Metropolises for Van Kreev, Van Kyr, Van Paer, Van Pas and Van Dra). Simply put, they are sets of ring gates, made by artificers, and they toss your letter into the gate for that city, which empties into a large bin. This one costs about 20 gold to send a letter this way - surprisingly, there are some who can afford an instant letter once a month, but not ring gates themselves. The whole system was set up by the previous Gold Lord and current Silver Lord of Altieriet when they realized they would really like to send a message to the then-current Lady Sorcerous of Van Kreev, and thought that they needed a better way to do this than casting a spell each time. So they made the ring gates, and when it took off, realized that the common man should at least have access to this amazing technology. And by common man, they of course meant the upper classes.
Chirps are perhaps my favorite - a small bird statue that will listen to your message and it is instantly known by all other Chirps owners who have your Rune Code encoded into their Nest (the magical disc the Chirps is programmed with). Invented by a mad artificer for setting up a (failed) military coup against the Chrome Lord of Altieriet, it has since become a very fun passtime of the nobles in Altieriet and Van Kreev, with a slight growing presence in Van Kyr and Limbeck's nobles as well. A Chirp Bird costs 1000gp, a Nest costs 2000. You can program up to five Birds with one Nest.

My players hate me some times, but then again, they've realized that with Chirps they CAN split the party. My players also love the camp.

[Palanan]

Here's a link to the pigeon section (http://www.appropedia.org/Micro-livestock:_Little-known_Small_Animals_with_a_Promising_Economic_Futu re_5#10_Pigeon) of the NRC report that BowStreetRunner mentioned. (Also, here's a hilarious article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11325452) about a carrier pigeon outracing a broadband download.)

Flight speeds for carrier pigeons seem to range from 30-50 mph, although as mentioned in the NRC report, a good tailwind can work wonders. I'd ignore the tactical movement rates and use this as a starting point.



Also, alchemyprime, kudos for an interesting guild concept. The Chirps are a trip.

:smalltongue:
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[alchemyprime]

Oh, I forgot another one that's a bit more high level - the Speaking Stones.

First, you enchant a geode with message, alarm, and know direction. Then, split the geode. Each half can talk to the other half. The Courier's Offices in major metropolises charge 1sp a minute per ten miles for you to have an actual conversation with an individual in another office. Normally you set up an appointment by Ten Minnit, then come to the office to wait for your appointment. Most people who can afford the Ten Minnit can afford the appointment to last at least an hour. The courier's guild is currently working on an address system so people can buy their own Half-Stones, then they can activate it (a move action) to call a Stone Operator, who will then find the address for the opposite stone and use a special Tuning Fork (enchanted with Locate Object and message as well) so that you can speak from anywhere. And because of the Locate Object on the other side, as well as extensive paperwork, there is a nice bill waiting for you when you're done, courtesy of the mail service.

The gnomes who run the Courier's Guild are hard at work to figure out how to combine a Half-Stone, a Chirp Bird and a minor illusion that shows who on the other side wants to speak with you. They are calling the prototype Smart Stones.

[Flickerdart]

Carrier pigeons can travel far far FAR faster than a horse.

You can even do some math to figure it out yourself though.

A horse travels at 50 feet per round according to the MM.
1 round is around 6 seconds of time. there are 10 rounds in a Minute.
A horse travels at 500 Feet per Minute or 30000 Feet per Hour (5.6 MPH).
One assumes that a courier will only travel 8 hours a day.
240000 Feet in a day then. (45 Miles)
10 days requires 2400000 feet of movement according to the movement rules assumed here. (454 miles)
You don't use combat movement to determine overland movement, there's a separate table (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/movement.htm). At 40 feet base speed (for a raven), a creature travels 32 miles per day.