We can make a TARDIS?!

[Razanir]

Saw this on another thread, but didn't want to derail. So how does one make a TARDIS in 3.5?


At what level? At level one you are pretty much screwed, at level twenty we can make you a Jedi. Granted we can also make you a TARDIS so that doesn't say much.

[Slipperychicken]

Saw this on another thread, but didn't want to derail. So how does one make a TARDIS in 3.5?

Stronghold Builder's Guide, use the rules therein to make a structure which can cast Teleport Through Time (sorc/wiz 9, search it. It's on the wizards website) at will. Have it use an illusion spell to make it look like a police box. Then you could probably use some extradimensional space rules to make it "bigger on the inside". See if you can apply intelligent item rules to it so it can talk to you, and so you can spend half your waking hours whining about the "heart of the tardis".

[Amnestic]

The biggest obstacle in creating a true TARDIS, in my eyes, would be the intelligence. The TARDIS is meant to be something which has a mind of its own, but not just any mind - it's a mind which perceives time constantly. Across all the billions of years across all the billions of planets across all dimensions. It sees this, all at once. And it makes decisions based off of it in real time.

I'd love to see how you'd sort that out. I don't care how high your Spot modifier is, you're not crossing temporal boundaries with it! :smalltongue:

[Alaris]

The biggest obstacle in creating a true TARDIS, in my eyes, would be the intelligence. The TARDIS is meant to be something which has a mind of its own, but not just any mind - it's a mind which perceives time constantly. Across all the billions of years across all the billions of planets across all dimensions. It sees this, all at once. And it makes decisions based off of it in real time.

I'd love to see how you'd sort that out. I don't care how high your Spot modifier is, you're not crossing temporal boundaries with it! :smalltongue:

Well, make it an intelligent item. You can give it full 'vision' within the world, via powerful Divination spells. I'm pretty sure there are some spells that let you see the distant past, or at least certain events of it. A friend of mine used one in a current D&D campaign.

As for seeing further into the future... good luck. And it would have to have an ABSURD intelligence to actually comprehend all of this and make decisions based off of it in real time...

As others have said, the basics of the TARDIS are actually simple to get down. The inside is an extradimensional space, and thus bigger on the inside. A simple illusion makes the outside look like a Police Box (or whatever your Chameleon Circuit makes your TARDIS look like).

The "Teleport Through Time" spell would function effectively for time-travel, as well as "Greater Teleport" for teleporting through space.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Nested Enveloping pits (MiC) are extremely useful for the bigger on the inside thing. And you can easily make it Intelligent with the rules in the SRD.

[only1doug]

a spell trap of Magnificent mansion should handle the infinite internal dimensions well enough.

[Kazyan]

If you do the H.I.V.E. TO trick in the Far Realms, then have that hive perform the Monty TO trick, it could basically view everything and have unlimited time to consider it. With a Rary's Interplanar Telepathic Bond, it could relay this information to a recieving construct of your choice inside the TARDIS, with instructions to speak everything it gets from the telepathic bond. There's your "view all time and space; make decisions based on it" part. It's terrible and wrong and awful because of the TO, but you can do it.

[Gavinfoxx]

What about the translator circuit?

Also:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=166492

What about the defensive features?

[Telonius]

It can also (apparently, based on Journey to the Center of the Tardis) create any tool you could possibly need, create hallucinatory terrain within itself, loop hallways back on themselves, and generally be a non-Euclidean pain in the butt if it wants to.

[Zanfire]

Intelligent items can activate themselves, no? So per MiC, give it use activated spells reshape itself internally via illusions and maybe genesis; give itself all the protections it needs and tongues for passengers, fabricate for tools, etc...???

[Fable Wright]

As for seeing further into the future... good luck. And it would have to have an ABSURD intelligence to actually comprehend all of this and make decisions based off of it in real time...

That would be the Doctor's job. Ridiculously high Int Factotum, and all that.

So, building the TARDIS...

In all likelyhood, the TARDIS is an Intelligent Magic Trap linked to the triggers of other magic traps, inside a block of Adamantine.

The traps involved:
Magnificent Mansion. This generates the entire inside of the TARDIS. It can also be looped recursively.
Tongues and Comprehend Langages traps. This is the Translator Circuit.
Permanency trap. This is how the Translator Circuit works indefinitely.
Travel Through Time trap. This brings everyone into the past.
Persistent Time Stop trap. This allows you to pass through 1 day in 1d4 rounds.
Time stop trap. Allows the TARDIS to chain this so the Persistent Time Stop Traps don't take forever to move through time.
Major Creation/True Creation trap. Anything you need from the Tardis.
Prestidigitation trap. For all of the little things.
Persistent Image trap. For the Chameleon Circuit.

[Slipperychicken]

If the TARDIS had enough divine ranks (Dr Who fans worship it, allowing it to ascend to godhood) and the Knowledge domain, it could know everything from every point in time and space. Portfolio sense means it knows everything [# of ranks] weeks in the future and past, which includes what it will knows [# of ranks] weeks from now, which includes stuff an additional [# of ranks] weeks farther. You stack that combo and it knows everything from [# of ranks] weeks before the earliest point in time it ever visitend, until [# of ranks] weeks after the latest point in time it visited.

After that, you cast Mindrape on the Tardis and suddenly you know everything too. That probably should result in either you assuming the duties of a Time Lord, being corrupted into an otherworldly being of dark knowledge and insanity (i.e. Time Lord), or your head exploding. Either one works.

[nedz]

What about the translator circuit?
Not required — almost everyone in the D&D multiverse speaks common.

Also: Tongues.

[Gavinfoxx]

Yea, but Tongues far away from the thing, after you are exposed to it for a while...

[nedz]

Tongues can be Permanenced — so the TARDIS cast's Tongues and then Permanency. It may cost it some XP, but there are ways around that.

[Slipperychicken]

Also: Tongues.

Craft slotless items of continuous Comprehend Languages (you don't need Tongues if everyone has Comprehend Languages). Call them Babelfish, bring a towel, and let the galactic adventure begin.

[nedz]

Comprehend Languages would allow TARDIS travellers to understand everyone else, but not the other way around. It really has to be Tongues.

[Slipperychicken]

Comprehend Languages would allow TARDIS travellers to understand everyone else, but not the other way around. It really has to be Tongues.

It was a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

[nedz]

It was a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I spotted the reference.
It's not exactly DW canon though, and it doesn't do the job required.

[SciChronic]

you people also forget that the space within the TARDIS can rearrange itself, and it can scan within itself and it's surroundings

[GreenSerpent]

A Mass Time Hop/Time Hop trap might be better for moving forwards in time.

[Talionis]

If the TARDIS had enough divine ranks (Dr Who fans worship it, allowing it to ascend to godhood) and the Knowledge domain, it could know everything from every point in time and space. Portfolio sense means it knows everything [# of ranks] weeks in the future and past, which includes what it will knows [# of ranks] weeks from now, which includes stuff an additional [# of ranks] weeks farther. You stack that combo and it knows everything from [# of ranks] weeks before the earliest point in time it ever visitend, until [# of ranks] weeks after the latest point in time it visited.

After that, you cast Mindrape on the Tardis and suddenly you know everything too. That probably should result in either you assuming the duties of a Time Lord, being corrupted into an otherworldly being of dark knowledge and insanity (i.e. Time Lord), or your head exploding. Either one works.

Ranks in Divinity was my first thought. Not sure the Tardis wasn't the first one doing the Mindraping, since its not exactly all knowing or stable.

But Epic level divinations may be enough. While the Tardis detects time anomalies it doesn't know everything. Something to keep in mind is both the Doctor and the Tardis are from the future so everything is technically their past.

[JonathonWilder]

Spells I would use involving the creation of a Tardis
Interplanetary Teleport: to allow movement anywhere within the same plane and through space.
Teleport Through Time: to allow movement anywhere through time past or future on the same plane.
Planeshift (or even Greater Planeshift): to allow movement to any plane and any place on such.
Tongues: to allow communication in any language to be spoken and understood when within a certain radius of the Tardis.
Ghost Sound: to allow for the 'EERrwWwoooooSHHHhEERrwWwoooooSHHHhEERrwWwoooooSHH Hh' sound of the Tardis materializing or dematerializing after travel.
Mage's Magnificent Mansion: possibly, to allow for 'bigger on the inside' effect. Yet perhaps with the spell Demiplane in effect since the inside is always expanding and is considered so large one could grow old and die before exploring the whole thing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interplanetary Teleport
School: conjuration (teleportation); Level cleric 9, sorcerer/wizard 9
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Components: V
Range: personal and touch
Target: you and touched objects or other touched willing creatures
Duration: instantaneous
Saving Throw: none and Will negates (object); Spell Resistance no and yes (object)
This spell functions as teleport, except there is truly no range limit and you do not need to have seen your destination, though you must have a solid grasp of which world you wish to travel to (“the third planet from the sun” is an acceptable destination, but “a habitable world near that bright star” is not). If you have a specific location on a planet in mind, you arrive there without a chance of failure; otherwise you arrive at a location that would not immediately be life-threatening. If no such safe landing zone exists on the world, such as someone attempting to travel into the sun without the proper precautions in place, the spell simply fails.

Teleport Through Time
School: Transmutation [Teleportation]
Level: Sor/Wiz 9
Components: V, S, M, XP
Casting Time: 1 round
Range: Personal and touch
Target: The character and touched objects or other touched willing creatures weighing up to 50 lb./level
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None and Will negates (object)
Spell Resistance: No and Yes (object)
A far more powerful version of the teleport spell, this spell instantly transports the character to the same location, but to a different time. Interplanar travel is not possible, and the spell fails on any plane where time is meaningless. The character can bring along objects and willing creatures totaling up to 50 pounds per caster level. Unwilling creatures cannot be affected by this spell. Only objects held or in use (attended) by another person receive saving throws and spell resistance.
To cast this spell, the character must be able to state the arrival time accurately, down to the minute. The spell never transports the caster and companions to the precise minute desired, but it cannot function at all without a specific minute in time to target. This "drift" effect of not arriving at the precise time desired grows with the "distance" through time (measured in years, months, and weeks) traveled. Thus, a caster teleporting to last month arrives closer to her goal than one traveling 250 years. The minimum temporal distance traveled is 1 day, so this spell is not useful for going back to the beginning of a melee that is still progressing.
This spell requires some knowledge of the destination time, so it cannot transport anyone into the future since the future is entirely unknown to the caster. Even spells that give knowledge of the future cannot give definite enough knowledge to allow this spell to work. It is possible to use this spell to travel forward in time, but only to the point in the caster's life when the caster first went back in time.
Since the caster may not know exactly what is transpiring at the destination time, prudent time-travelers prepare for the worst.
The errors in arrival for this spell occur in time rather than in location, since the character does not change locations at all.

To see how closely the character arrives to the planned arrival time, consult this table... more on the spell here: http://www.realmshelps.net/faerun/portals/time/spells.shtml

[Renen]

The necromancy school is banned on giantitp. Silly wizards.

[JonathonWilder]

The necromancy school is banned on giantitp. Silly wizards.
I was hoping it wasn't old enough to be considered necromancy, I apologize.