Faster than light travel in D&D

[Learuis]

Alright, this is a weird one.

A combat round takes place over 6 seconds, no matter how many combatants are involved in the battle. It's assumed that the actions are happening simultaneously. This leads me to a little thought experiment.

Imagine that hundreds of thousands of fighters arrived at a battle and rolled initiative. Instead of fighting, they lined up in single file according to initiative order approximately 30 feet away from each other, along a very, very long railroad line.

The speed of light is 186,282.397 miles per second. So in a single round of combat, light can travel 1,117,694.382 miles. There are 5,280 feet in a mile, so that means that light has a movement speed of 5,901,426,336.96 (Thats almost 6 billion!) feet per round.

So, the rail line along which our fighters stand is about 1.2 million miles long. We need about 196,714,212 of them set up at 30 ft intervals in order to cover the distance that light can travel within a single round of combat.

Now imagine a gnome sitting in a minecart at one end of the track. The fighter with the highest initiative pushes the Gnome-mobile 30 feet down the track toward the next fighter, and it comes to a rest in front of him. The second fighter then pushes the cart down the line to the next fighter, and so on. This repeats for the entire round, until all 196,714,212 fighters have each pushed the gnome 30ft. This means that within those 6 seconds, the gnome has traveled faster than the speed of light.

The DM stands up from the table. "A black hole opens and devours the universe."

[SiuiS]

And? The commoner rail gun is a well known and obviously cheesy concept.

[Asrrin]

Alright, this is a weird one.

A combat round takes place over 6 seconds, no matter how many combatants are involved in the battle. It's assumed that the actions are happening simultaneously. This leads me to a little thought experiment.

Imagine that hundreds of thousands of fighters arrived at a battle and rolled initiative. Instead of fighting, they lined up in single file according to initiative order approximately 30 feet away from each other, along a very, very long railroad line.

The speed of light is 186,282.397 miles per second. So in a single round of combat, light can travel 1,117,694.382 miles. There are 5,280 feet in a mile, so that means that light has a movement speed of 5,901,426,336.96 (Thats almost 6 billion!) feet per round.

So, the rail line along which our fighters stand is about 1.2 million miles long. We need about 196,714,212 of them set up at 30 ft intervals in order to cover the distance that light can travel within a single round of combat.

Now imagine a gnome sitting in a minecart at one end of the track. The fighter with the highest initiative pushes the Gnome-mobile 30 feet down the track toward the next fighter, and it comes to a rest in front of him. The second fighter then pushes the cart down the line to the next fighter, and so on. This repeats for the entire round, until all 196,714,212 fighters have each pushed the gnome 30ft. This means that within those 6 seconds, the gnome has traveled faster than the speed of light.

The DM stands up from the table. "A black hole opens and devours the universe."

Aaaaaaand you've killed the catgirl. thanks for that.

[Learuis]

Really? I didn't know that this was already a thing. Dang.

Edit: I looked up commoner railgun. I'm not trying to shoot the gnome AT something, just get him to have traveled faster than the speed of light over the course of 6 seconds. Which he did...

[Emperor Tippy]

1) The D&D mile is 6,000 feet.
2) This is known as the commoner rail gun
3) Going faster than the speed of light is trivial in D&D. See Greater Teleport as just one of many examples.
4) Physics really has very little place in D&D as this is a setting where Law, Chaos, Good, Evil, Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Positive Energy, and Negative Energy are the fundamental forces of existence.
5) Any of the Genesis spells/powers allows you to set whatever laws of physics you desire inside the created demiplane. Including doing little things like setting the speed of light to one foot per hour and the like.

[Ravens_cry]

Eh, the OP is too 'game rule, physics rule' switcheroonie for my tastes. If you want real FTL in D&D (assuming the speed of light is the same), just greater teleport somewhere more than six light-seconds away.

[Learuis]

The difference between what I am describing and the commoner railgun is that I'm not saying that the gnome will be traveling at some ludicrous speed at the end of the round, which will allow him to continue off in that direction. Each fighter pushes him and he comes to a stop before the next one pushes him.... at the end, he is very much stationary, but he also went farther than he should have been able to within one round.

So at no point in the round was he ever moving faster than the speed of light, yet he still physically translated through space to arrive there since we call that 6 seconds simultaneous.

Teleport is one way, but I feel like you sort of dematerialize and reconstruct at your destination rather than physically move there via actual travel. There's a difference between teleporting and moving quickly.

[Yuki Akuma]

The difference between what I am describing and the commoner railgun is that I'm not saying that the gnome will be traveling at some ludicrous speed at the end of the round, which will allow him to continue off in that direction.

That's not how the commoner railgun works either. The name is something of a misnomer.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Actually, have we ever defined how long a swift action takes? I'm thinking that a quickened teleport might also break the FTL barrier.

[Nettlekid]

The difference between what I am describing and the commoner railgun is that I'm not saying that the gnome will be traveling at some ludicrous speed at the end of the round, which will allow him to continue off in that direction. Each fighter pushes him and he comes to a stop before the next one pushes him.... at the end, he is very much stationary, but he also went farther than he should have been able to within one round.

So at no point in the round was he ever moving faster than the speed of light, yet he still physically translated through space to arrive there since we call that 6 seconds simultaneous.

Teleport is one way, but I feel like you sort of dematerialize and reconstruct at your destination rather than physically move there via actual travel. There's a difference between teleporting and moving quickly.

At no point in the peasant railgun does any thing or person move faster than light. It's still just "pass along at a normal passing speed." It's only when you apply the logical conclusion that an object has moved thousands of miles in the span of six seconds do you state that it must be moving at that high speed, and thus continues on. So the same thing applies to your Fighter chain. Similarly, the Epic usage of Sleight of Hand allows you to displace a creature up to 10 feet with a DC 80 check, and add 20 to that to make it a free action. Using Trickery Devotion, you can have a duplicate that moves at the same time you do. Keep making that check, and displace one another 10 feet in a line for as long as you want. It's still "lift up from stationary, put down stationary." But you are moving at arbitrary speeds.

As far as the teleporting goes, keep in mind that with regard to the world of physics, not even information can travel faster than the speed of light. So a "real world teleporter" would scan you/dissolve you into atoms or whatever, send a message containing the data of you at a speed equal to or less than the speed of light, and then process/reassemble you at the end. But in D&D, Greater Teleport can let you go further, faster. It outright breaks that rule.

There's also some legendary creature in one of the Faerun books that has Greater Teleport at will, but instead of actually teleporting, it turns ghostly and moves at a speed such that it has basically teleported (thus bypassing Dimensional Anchor and stuff like that). THAT is definitely faster than light travel.

[Devronq]

Actually I think this example is way better than the commoner rail gun as the commoner rail gun doesn't really work as it states that free actions should be limited to a reasonable amount and I'd say millions in one turn isn't exactly a reasonable amount...

[Elderand]

Actually I think this example is way better than the commoner rail gun as the commoner rail gun doesn't really work as it states that free actions should be limited to a reasonable amount and I'd say millions in one turn isn't exactly a reasonable amount...

Free actions are limited in one turn PER CHARACTER.

The party doesn't have a pool of free action they have to split between themselves, nor does the multiverse.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Free actions are limited in one turn PER CHARACTER.

The party doesn't have a pool of free action they have to split between themselves, nor does the multiverse.

Where on earth did you see that?
Free Action
Free actions consume a very small amount of time and effort. You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally. However, there are reasonable limits on what you can really do for free.Free actions lack the "You only get one" tag that Swift /Immediate actions do.

[Nettlekid]

Where on earth did you see that?Free actions lack the "You only get one" tag that Swift /Immediate actions do.

He said "in one turn per character," not "one per turn per character." That is to say, if the DM is encouraged to limit the number of free actions a character reasonably gets in a turn, then that number is for each character in each turn. (The phrasing was a bit confusing)

[Learuis]

I think they're just saying that a person can only do so many free actions in a round, as long as it's reasonable. You couldn't recite War and Peace from memory as a free action, it takes too long.

But, there are no free actions being taken in my example. Each fighter is using a standard action to push the gnome.

[Ravens_cry]

Actually, have we ever defined how long a swift action takes? I'm thinking that a quickened teleport might also break the FTL barrier.
Unlikely in a typical game; you'd need a caster level of at least 1,863 if swift action are one second, or 932 if they are half a second. On the other hand, going 558,848 miles with greater teleport would, and it needs no caster level shenanigans.

[Spore]

Who says Teleport spells don't just create wormholes that influence space time so that you just skip certain parts? That seems like the typical teleport spell to me.

If you want to break the equation just imagine the railgun of the same amount of 17th level wizards casting timestop.

[Lord Haart]

As far as i'm aware, there is no way to travel faster than light in 3.5, as D&D light (or, to be precise in terms, illumination; light there is either 1. a common label for that or b. a specific effect of a single illumination-changing first-level spell) is a parameter of a given square rather than a thing by itself, and all effects that change illumination level take effect immediately over their entire area.

[Learuis]

At no point in the peasant railgun does any thing or person move faster than light. It's still just "pass along at a normal passing speed." It's only when you apply the logical conclusion that an object has moved thousands of miles in the span of six seconds do you state that it must be moving at that high speed, and thus continues on.


I get what you're saying, but I don't think that's a logical conclusion based on the (admittedly, already flawed) sequence of events. If the gnome accelerated continuously with every push, his mass would also increase, eventually to the point that the next fighter in the line wouldn't be strong enough to push him. By regulating his speed in each segment of the round to be only 30 ft, he never travels faster than that.

There's plenty of other flaws in logic with the 6 second combat asychronous-yet-simultaneous combat round, though. If viewed from above, watching the events play out over 6 seconds on video, all of the fighters would step out on to to the tracks and making a pushing motion at exactly the same time, since each one took 6 seconds to do it. The gnome-minecart would instantly appear at the other end of the track.

[Ravens_cry]

Who says Teleport spells don't just create wormholes that influence space time so that you just skip certain parts? That seems like the typical teleport spell to me.

That's still FTL, with all the consequences there of.

[Nettlekid]

I get what you're saying, but I don't think that's a logical conclusion based on the (admittedly, already flawed) sequence of events. If the gnome accelerated continuously with every push, his mass would also increase, eventually to the point that the next fighter in the line wouldn't be strong enough to push him. By regulating his speed in each segment of the round to be only 30 ft, he never travels faster than that.

There's plenty of other flaws in logic with the 6 second combat asychronous-yet-simultaneous combat round, though. If viewed from above, watching the events play out over 6 seconds on video, all of the fighters would step out on to to the tracks and making a pushing motion at exactly the same time, since each one took 6 seconds to do it. The gnome-minecart would instantly appear at the other end of the track.

But that's just it, the 6 second combat round IS inherently flawed when looking at it from a logical point of view. Let's say you have a triangle formed of Barbarian at vertex A, Rogue at vertex B, and Wizard at vertex C. On his turn, Rogue moves to Barbarian and attacks. Then Barbarian charges at Wizard and attacks. This is all proper D&D combat, right? Except that actually, because it took place in the same six seconds, Barbarian was charging toward C at the same time that Rogue was move-action-moving to A. Barbarian was long gone from A at the time Rogue got there. But that's not how the game sees it. The game sees it as having enough time for a progression of "Rogue move, Rogue attack, Barbarian move, Barbarian attack," in that 6 seconds, even though in real life it would be "Rogue and Barbarian move, Rogue and Barbarian attack."

Similarly, in the Peasant Railgun (which I've heard of as using just a shotput instead of a gnome or whatever), the shotput only moves the speed of moving from one hand to the next. "Peasant 1's turn. Peasant 1 uses a move action to give the shotput to Peasant 2. Peasant 2's turn. Peasant 2 uses a move action to stand perfectly still for some reason, as though proving he's totally still. He then uses a move action to pass the shotput to Peasant 3. Peasant 3 does the same thing as Peasant 2. Repeat as necessary." Nothing in that sequence of events breaks the 6 second combat rule, and there is nothing saying the shotput is moving faster than however fast it takes to pass it from one hand to the next. However, when you then introduce the real world physics aspect to it, you state that Velocity=Displacement/Time. Displacement is, say, a million miles, while time is six seconds. Thus, Velocity=lots and lots. It is an entirely flawed argument, but by introducing real world physics into D&D at particular points while outright ignoring it in other cases, that's how it happens.

[Phelix-Mu]

Actually, if we want to get down to brass tacks, the big problem in D&D is that velocity changes instantaneously from zero (your character isn't moving) to your movement speed (or whatever multiple of that you are taking this round). That instantaneous change in velocity gives (anyone here having taken physics recently please correct me) a delta v over delta t (acceleration) that can't be calculated it's so fast (approaching infinite).

If everyone has a virtually infinite rate of acceleration (even if over a severely limited breadth of space), then faster than light travel is the least of our worries. Think of the gs one would pull during that first fraction of a second as the character begins to move! We used to think the monk's problem was that he couldn't be effective in combat; in reality, his problem was that his face got ripped off the moment he charged into combat.

This, if I'm not just totally wrong, is because acceleration isn't a thing the rules take into account, and thus this area of physics really can't be modeled in the game.

I believe that this is also tied to the problem of delta t (change in time) being broken into quanta of six seconds at minimum (or arguably fractions thereof, such as two move actions per six seconds), but not meaningfully existing at smaller scale. Without sufficient granularity, we can't really expect space/time to behave in a manner similar to reality in certain instances.

[Deophaun]

You want FTL in D&D? Pick up a bow. Insert arrow. Shoot arrow. As there is no time between shooting the arrow and it impacting the target, the arrow has traveled faster than light.

[Thanatosia]

Teleporting in D&D is not FTL. It's moving at sub light speeds through an alternate medium (Typically the astral plane IIRC, though some methods use the plane of shadow instead). Teleport spells work through moving between planes of existance, and anything that blocks planar movement blocks teleportation by it's default fluff. It's no more breaking the speed of light then when you fold a piece of paper in half and punch through from one side to the other.... it appears as if you nearly-instantly traveled from point A to point B from the 2d perspective of the plane of paper, but you really just moved at normal speed through a 3rd dimension.

[Ravens_cry]

Teleporting in D&D is not FTL. It's moving at sub light speeds through an alternate medium (Typically the astral plane IIRC). Teleport spells work through moving between planes of existance, and anything that blocks planar movement blocks teleportation. It's no more breaking the speed of light then when you fold a piece of paper in half and punch through from one side to the other.... it appears as if you nearly-instantly traveled from point A to point B from the 2d perspective of the plane of paper, but you really just moved at normal speed through a 3rd dimension.
It's still FTL travel for pretty much any purpose you care to name.

[Beardbarian]

What about the Chuck E Cheese stuff?

[Spuddles]

The difference between what I am describing and the commoner railgun is that I'm not saying that the gnome will be traveling at some ludicrous speed at the end of the round, which will allow him to continue off in that direction. Each fighter pushes him and he comes to a stop before the next one pushes him.... at the end, he is very much stationary, but he also went farther than he should have been able to within one round.

So at no point in the round was he ever moving faster than the speed of light, yet he still physically translated through space to arrive there since we call that 6 seconds simultaneous.

Teleport is one way, but I feel like you sort of dematerialize and reconstruct at your destination rather than physically move there via actual travel. There's a difference between teleporting and moving quickly.

Teleport actually uses "wormhole" travel via the astral plane. You move on to the astral and off the astral and skip distance in between.


That's not how the commoner railgun works either. The name is something of a misnomer.

It's not a misnomer at all. It was properly named to describe exactly what it was thought to do- fire a quarterstaff at lightspeed. Widespread changes in philosophy of killing catgirls vs. RAWtarded readings led to its discredit as functioning as a railgun. But in a historical context, it is perfectly named. It also happens to not actually work.

[Vedhin]

You want FTL, you use the Ring Gates (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#ringGates) drive. For ease of use, have lots of Quintessence (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/quintessence.htm) on hand.

Required:
1 pair of Ring Gates
1 spring
enough Quintessence to cover said spring
1 or more castings of Mending (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mending.htm)

Step 1: Push spring through Ring Gates.
Step 2: Use Mending to fuse the two ends of the spring at a 90 degree angle. It should remain partway through the Gates.
Step 3: Cover the spring completely with Quintessence, so it can withstand the forces of arbitrary magnitude that it will experience.

Bad illustration:
r--- o
| \
o

the lines are the spring, the "r" is the right angle, and the "o"s are the ring gates. The spring is topologically a torus, but space is bent around it in horrible ways to accomodate it being straight. And Ring Gates definitely bend space, because they let spells through as well as other things.

Step 4: Rotate your Ring Gates in opposite directions.

If you do it right, force will be produced pulling along the \ in the illustration, towards the bottom right in this case. Due to the bending of space, the force applied to the spring goes through a feedback loop, reaching arbitrarily high levels at an exponential rate.



Ring Gates are, IMO, the single most broken thing in D&D if physics are used. I'll not even get into the madness of what happens if they transmit gravity.

[Phelix-Mu]

"Commoner Railgun" always conjures up an image in my head of a commoner breaking the sound barrier as he heads into the stratosphere after being launched from the Commoner Railgun. It saddens me that it only fires quarterstaves.

[nedz]

Actually, if we want to get down to brass tacks, the big problem in D&D is that velocity changes instantaneously from zero (your character isn't moving) to your movement speed (or whatever multiple of that you are taking this round). That instantaneous change in velocity gives (anyone here having taken physics recently please correct me) a delta v over delta t (acceleration) that can't be calculated it's so fast (approaching infinite).

If everyone has a virtually infinite rate of acceleration (even if over a severely limited breadth of space), then faster than light travel is the least of our worries. Think of the gs one would pull during that first fraction of a second as the character begins to move! We used to think the monk's problem was that he couldn't be effective in combat; in reality, his problem was that his face got ripped off the moment he charged into combat.

This, if I'm not just totally wrong, is because acceleration isn't a thing the rules take into account, and thus this area of physics really can't be modeled in the game.

I believe that this is also tied to the problem of delta t (change in time) being broken into quanta of six seconds at minimum (or arguably fractions thereof, such as two move actions per six seconds), but not meaningfully existing at smaller scale. Without sufficient granularity, we can't really expect space/time to behave in a manner similar to reality in certain instances.

This is because there is no momentum and no kinetic energy.

Also, because the proof of the maximum speed of light depends on Einstein's famous (kinetic) energy identity there is no light speed limit to break anyway.

[Phelix-Mu]

This is because there is no momentum and no kinetic energy.

Also, because the proof of the maximum speed of light depends on Einstein's famous (kinetic) energy identity there is no light speed limit to break anyway.

Hmm. I bet we could brainstorm some fun stuff to do with all this physics. Like that thing with the ring gates. But less ring gates. I'm tempted to make generous use of reverse gravity (my favoritest spell evah), but magic breaks even imaginary rules at an arbitrarily fast rate. I like the mundane nature of the Commoner Railgun.

For some reason, my current brainstorming is full of flying monks (or more specifically, Flying Nuns).

[Vedhin]

Hmm. I bet we could brainstorm some fun stuff to do with all this physics. Like that thing with the ring gates. But less ring gates. I'm tempted to make generous use of reverse gravity (my favoritest spell evah), but magic breaks even imaginary rules at an arbitrarily fast rate. I like the mundane nature of the Commoner Railgun.

For some reason, my current brainstorming is full of flying monks (or more specifically, Flying Nuns).

Less Ring Gates? :smallfrown:

I assume this means no Portable Holes either.

[Nettlekid]

Since we're now talking about space manipulation and stuff (by the way, I don't understand that Ring Gates drive, but I want to, because it sounds really cool), what would happen if you were to somehow get a pair of Ring Gates where one was bigger than the other? Maybe you cast Dispel Magic on one of the rings, then Shrink Item on the currently nonmagical ring, and then let it become magical again. Or even easier, just give one ring to someone else, and then cast Enlarge Person on yourself. What happens when you go through the ring? If you go from the smaller ring to the larger one, would you scale up proportionately?

[Vedhin]

The shrunken Ring Gate would not alter size. Only the dimensions of the apeture would be altered. But since you brought up shrunken Ring Gates, try dropping the smaller one through the larger and see what happens.

[Nettlekid]

The shrunken Ring Gate would not alter size. Only the dimensions of the apeture would be altered. But since you brought up shrunken Ring Gates, try dropping the smaller one through the larger and see what happens.

Although this is total theory not at all based in any level of rules or logic, I would venture that the size would change, because the rings are warping space. That which enters near the rim of the small ring would exit from the rim of the big ring. That which enters near the center of the small ring would exit from the center of the big ring. If not, then if you put something in near the rim of the big ring, where does it come out in the small ring? If you put a big log which exactly fits the dimensions of the large ring into the large ring, it must shrink in order to come out of the small ring. And it's not going to get stuck, because the rings aren't actually doors that can block it, it's just a connection of space.

Like...my assumption is that the every point within the small ring maps to every point within the big ring, because presumably that's how the portal works in the first place. So that which passes through points in the small ring exit through the corresponding points on the big ring, which happen to be further away than before, so it gets bigger.

[Devronq]

Free actions are limited in one turn PER CHARACTER.

The party doesn't have a pool of free action they have to split between themselves, nor does the multiverse.

I wasn't referring to the ops example. The commoner rail gun as I know it is get of the horse get back on the horse which requires you to use millions of free actions in one turn. The ops example is was better and much more legal.

[Vedhin]

Although this is total theory not at all based in any level of rules or logic, I would venture that the size would change, because the rings are warping space. That which enters near the rim of the small ring would exit from the rim of the big ring. That which enters near the center of the small ring would exit from the center of the big ring. If not, then if you put something in near the rim of the big ring, where does it come out in the small ring? If you put a big log which exactly fits the dimensions of the large ring into the large ring, it must shrink in order to come out of the small ring. And it's not going to get stuck, because the rings aren't actually doors that can block it, it's just a connection of space.

Like...my assumption is that the every point within the small ring maps to every point within the big ring, because presumably that's how the portal works in the first place. So that which passes through points in the small ring exit through the corresponding points on the big ring, which happen to be further away than before, so it gets bigger.

Yes, you're right. All the points on one ring can be mapped to a point on the other, 1-for-1. Therefore, things will change size. Physics+magic is confusing.

[Deophaun]

It's still FTL travel for pretty much any purpose you care to name.
FTL Rods from God? Teleport doesn't work.

[Vedhin]

For some reason, my current brainstorming is full of flying monks (or more specifically, Flying Nuns).

Thinking over this, a good place to start would be stop-motion jumping. The Jump rules specify that if you Jump further than your speed, it takes you multiple rounds to finish your jump. If you can swing a bonus action between turns (Lesser Celerity maybe?), you can double-jump. So someone with immunity to daze and some way of casting Lesser Celerity a lot can fly by jumping.

[Ravens_cry]

FTL Rods from God? Teleport doesn't work.

Maybe not FTl, but a way to get them really high up, yes.

[Maginomicon]

I figure that it's worth it for me to note that in order to prevent the issues of interstellar travel becoming trivial in my futuristic campaign setting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=304652), I have the void of outer space by its very nature limit teleportation through open space to 2000 miles (the same as a CL 20 Teleport spell). (I also have a caveat that prevents using other planes as interstellar waypoints, so there's no tricks to be found there)

Low Earth Orbit starts at ~99 miles, which means it's not a big deal to teleport to the ISS at ~263 miles (every planet has at least one spaceport in geosynchronous orbit at roughly this distance). The distance to Earth's moon however is a whopping 238,900 miles, so every planet that has a moon has a set of orbiting waypoint stations strung out in a line that is lunar-synchronous with the planet's moon.

Actual interplanetary/interstellar travel involves a range of possible effects. Curse of Spilt Water can be used to store people as water in a vat (and/or literally frozen into cryostasis) if you're going to be travelling at an impractically slow speed (Flesh to Stone also works but is more risky). Really, the GM (that is, I) can simply say that we have FTL technology similar to warp engines and that's good enough for actual play. We don't need to recreate the Star Trek Technical Manual to create what's essentially a "space boat" (the axiom "Never Get On The Boat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdM4QTuE3hc)", of course, still applies). Insert Spelljammer reference here.

[Vedhin]

I figure that it's worth it for me to note that in order to prevent the issues of interstellar travel becoming trivial in my futuristic campaign setting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=304652), I have the void of outer space by its very nature limit teleportation through open space to 2000 miles (the same as a CL 20 Teleport spell). (I also have a caveat that prevents using other planes as interstellar waypoints, so there's no tricks to be found there)

Alright, new physics abusing challenge. Build a spaceship, using D&D rules mixed with physics. We have a warp drive if we can hook the SpRing Gate (my term) up to something that will move the ship. We can build the hull of the ship with Fabricate. We can use a large quantity of Bottles of Air to combat leaks (lower pressure will suck air out of the Bottles). And a Decanter of Endless Water is endless water.

So what else do we need to make interstellar travel workable? For bonus points, add standard sci-fi things, like teleporter pads, deflector shields, and some kind of laser cannon.

[Phelix-Mu]

Alright, new physics abusing challenge. Build a spaceship, using D&D rules mixed with physics. We have a warp drive if we can hook the SpRing Gate (my term) up to something that will move the ship. We can build the hull of the ship with Fabricate. We can use a large quantity of Bottles of Air to combat leaks (lower pressure will suck air out of the Bottles). And a Decanter of Endless Water is endless water.

So what else do we need to make interstellar travel workable? For bonus points, add standard sci-fi things, like teleporter pads, deflector shields, and some kind of laser cannon.

Actually had a brainstorm about how to do the spaceship thing for a recent epic level campaign spanning different rpg/video game settings. Our methods involved mythals (which single-handedly can do pretty much anything imaginable), but you can strip that out without too much difficulty (although it takes much, much more time).

Ingredients:
- tree tokens
- woodshape/fabricate on the living trees to form them into the hull for the ship
- hardening/matter manipulation on the wood to make it as hard as possible
- high-level druids to awaken the trees
- telepathic bonds on everyone
-optional riverine coating

Give the trees access to magic items, win action economy. As a living ship, it can easily be repaired, and arguably might grow bigger on it's own over time. I'm just a sucker for sentient ships, and this is one of the easier ways to make it happen (short of Tippy's forthcoming post involving awakened constuct ice assassin aleax of animated objects with Permanent Emanation (planar bubble)).

Propulsion might be an issue if the DM rules that the game doesn't support "every action has an equal and opposite reaction," but as the ship will be weightless in zero gravity, any single tree could propel the whole thing. I think we used a combo of at will telekinesis and permanent reverse gravity of the exterior of the hull to allow the ship to float and propel itself. Of course, for ease of use, just make the whole thing small enough to fit through a gate spell and travel to a fast transit plane.

Infinite telekinesis and something to conjure rocks (even short lived ones) works for a mass driver. Some ice assassins of warforged warlocks can be incorporated into the hull to allow for "laser" batteries, especially if they can be hardened using the normal methods. Likewise, extra points for incorporating a fiend or something else with useful SLAs (gasp, not the solar drive) into an item that can be used by those on board (sounds like a job for planar binding or some such).

[Vedhin]

Propulsion might be an issue if the DM rules that the game doesn't support "every action has an equal and opposite reaction," but as the ship will be weightless in zero gravity, any single tree could propel the whole thing.

Physics is actually in the RAW. In the DMG, under the description of the MAtrial Plane, IIRC, it basically says that the Material Plane follows normal physics.

[Phelix-Mu]

Physics is actually in the RAW. In the DMG, under the description of the MAtrial Plane, IIRC, it basically says that the Material Plane follows normal physics.

And yet, it is not. My monk can punch a rock hard enough to pulverize it, but no where does it say that the rock should move as a result of a slightly lesser punch. Force can be exacted on objects, but absent a specific mechanic, this usually doesn't translate into movement. Of course, a DM may houserule otherwise, but normal combat doesn't reflect this.

Now, common sense dictates that if you push on a door, it will open barring some opposition, even if the rules don't state such. But this quickly runs afoul of what the rules do say (namely in combat, and since many spells were designed for use in combat, the intersection of physics and D&D is far from clear-cut).

[Vedhin]

So what else do we need to make interstellar travel workable? For bonus points, add standard sci-fi things, like teleporter pads, deflector shields, and some kind of laser cannon.

Deflector Shields are go! We use Permanacied Walls of Force for them. In order to take them down when we want, we set them up so that they pass through Ring Gates. One Ring Gate is mounte on the hull, and its other half is in our shield generator room. Whenever we want to lower the shields, we suppress the Ring Gate, and the Wall of Force is no longer able to pass through the Ring Gate. It now moves entirely to its original location, the shield generator room of our ship. To suppress the Ring Gates we get a cleric with Persistent Antimagic Field, and have him walk near the Ring Gates when we wish to take the Shields offline.

More Bad Illustration:

________
|sssssssss|ssssss o
|sssssssss|s____|s|__
|____ ___| |_______|
sssss| |
sssss o

The "o"s are the Ring Gates. The boxes are the Wall of Force. The big part is the part we can move around with the Ring Gates, and the small part is fixed in place. The big part is outside and the small inside.




I've also been trying to work on the food problem, but the best I can come up with is a magic trap of Create Food and Water. Which actually works well fluff-wise now that I think about it.

[Captnq]

See, this is where you just need to accept that the laws of D&D universe are different then ours. Fireballs aren't balls. They are a series of right angles. Things have Hit Points and XPs and Hardness and are made of elements like water, not hydrogen and oxygen.

The commoner railgun is neat, except each DM has that option to say, "No more then X distance. Sorry. Don't care how many free actions you have."

Then people start to screech about RAW, then you point out the section where is says by RAW, the DM can make up any limit on free actions he wants, even One free action a round.

So, you want to look at it from a physics point of view, every campaign has slightly different laws of physics. Deal with it. If someone wishes to allow unlimited free actions, it's his funeral. If someone wishes to allow adding his own physics so the railgun makes a time-travel wormhole, go for it.

It's all academic and rather pointless. It proves nothing. It doesn't expand our knowledge of the rules. It doesn't help to clarify anything else in the game system. Finally, I doubt there is a single DM who would actually allow it to happen.

In D&D, there is no E=MC^2. Some really weird things happen in D&D, but to someone in the game, it would seem quite normal. Frankly, I find gravity to be rather strange and out of place in the real world. You'd think by now we'd have detected a graviton or something. Some things in the universe are just arbitrary and random. It is. Best not to dry yourself crazy trying to figure out why and move on.

[Vedhin]

*stuff*

Okay... I don't get it. It seems to me that you are saying that those of us who enjoy this stuff should just quit because you think it's pointless. I assume that isn't what you meant, but that's how it looks to me.

[Phelix-Mu]

I find there is a fine line between worrying too much and maintaining a degree of simulationism.

The simulator is flawed, mainly because the game was designed to be played by the general populace, not only those of super-genius caliber. But even with a cap on the complexity of what the rules can simulate (I'd put the barrier right around deflector shields, by the way), there is still a huge amount of specific rules in 3.5 that can be combo'd in innovative ways to make possible the kind of things that the core rules don't support. Computers don't exist by RAW, but with enough hand-raising skeletons/hive mind creatures/telepathically networked whatevers, you can get a pretty nice proximation of a computer in everything but size (which can quickly be solved with extradimensional storage/demiplanes and more interplanar telepathic bond or the like).

Our epic-level tree-ship was made up of thousands of genius-level colossal trees. Networked together and with access to various mythals, there was a stupidly high level to the things that they could accomplish in any given six second period. Even minus the mythals, they could still be optimized to a pretty sickening level.

[Learuis]

The commoner railgun is neat, except each DM has that option to say, "No more then X distance. Sorry. Don't care how many free actions you have."

Then people start to screech about RAW, then you point out the section where is says by RAW, the DM can make up any limit on free actions he wants, even One free action a round.

It's all academic and rather pointless. It proves nothing. It doesn't expand our knowledge of the rules. It doesn't help to clarify anything else in the game system. Finally, I doubt there is a single DM who would actually allow it to happen.



It is definitely academic only and certainly pointless, but still fun. Although my example does not rely on free actions at all.

Everyone talking about the rings, I have no idea what those are but sounds neat. haha

[Phelix-Mu]

Ring gates are a magic item from the DMG. I believe they are under the Wondrous Item section.

For less balance on the same theme, get planar ring gates, from the Planar Handbook. Yeah, I don't know who was smoking what...at least they are expensive?

I once got a DM to okay using multiple planar ring gates to link a series of portable holes, to create a kind of invisible, mobile building effect. Pretty cool beans, but only really worth it once you've broken WBL (or at epic, where WBL breaks itself).

[lunar2]

As far as the teleporting goes, keep in mind that with regard to the world of physics, not even information can travel faster than the speed of light. So a "real world teleporter" would scan you/dissolve you into atoms or whatever, send a message containing the data of you at a speed equal to or less than the speed of light, and then process/reassemble you at the end. But in D&D, Greater Teleport can let you go further, faster. It outright breaks that rule.


really, i never knew the speed of light limited the speed of information. so all those theoretical quantum entanglement commmunication devices don't actually work as advertised? they can't actually send information over any distance instantly?

[Nettlekid]

really, i never knew the speed of light limited the speed of information. so all those theoretical quantum entanglement commmunication devices don't actually work as advertised? they can't actually send information over any distance instantly?

Ah, well now that's the interesting thing about quantum entanglement. Although feasibly you can use quantum entanglement to make inferences instantaneously, no actual information is ever transferred. There is no...anything that could be imagined as like a data packet or wavelength or any piece of information, nothing's actually travelling. Seeing one half of a quantum entangled system means that you can make inferences about the other half, but the other half's information isn't actually reaching you.

A good example I saw to describe this is that imagine that you are working with a friend who is standing one light minute away from you, on an otherwise flat surface (so you can actually see your friend in the far distance if you had superhuman vision.) You and your friend have a system by which they set off two beacons, one red and one blue, one light-second apart (3x10^8 meters, naturally). These beacons are activated simultaneously. If you see either color, you know that the other one has been activated too. So, your friend activates both beacons, the red one of which is one light-second closer to you than the blue. You see the red light, and in that moment you know that the blue beacon has also been activated, even though the light from the blue beacon (the information that would allow you to know this) has yet to reach you, because it is moving at the speed of light, not faster than the speed of light. You knew a thing (the activation of the blue beacon) faster than the speed of light, but no information actually traveled faster than the speed of light.

Now, how quantum entanglement WORKS without transmitting information faster than the speed of light is...more complicated. I don't know if scientists fully understand it yet.

[Vedhin]

For less balance on the same theme, get planar ring gates, from the Planar Handbook. Yeah, I don't know who was smoking what...at least they are expensive?

I once got a DM to okay using multiple planar ring gates to link a series of portable holes, to create a kind of invisible, mobile building effect. Pretty cool beans, but only really worth it once you've broken WBL (or at epic, where WBL breaks itself).

These are breaking my mid with their awesomeness. Now we can export planar environments. No need to worry about food for our spaceship, just send a halfling through to whatever plane.

Ooh! If we can find/create a plane of black holes, we can use Quintessenced Planar Ring Gates to create singularities where we want. Combine with Reverse Gravity for simulating white holes, and we can make a functioning Alcubierre drive. With that and the arbitrary force from the spring/ring gate contraption, we can do FTL without running afoul of relativity.

We could also make a ship's computer with Permanacied Animate Objects and Awaken Construct. Now any ship can be sentient!


really, i never knew the speed of light limited the speed of information. so all those theoretical quantum entanglement commmunication devices don't actually work as advertised? they can't actually send information over any distance instantly?

Quantum entanglement stuff still works. Quantum stuff doesn't play well with the rest of physics.

[ericgrau]

The big problem with the commoner railgun is using game rules and no physics for the first part, then using physics and no game rules for the 2nd part. You can't switch the laws of the multiverse part way through. Either the projectile reaches a peak velocity of around 30-40 mph or it moves past the speed of light without any momentum, relativistic effects, or other special effects and life goes on. Pick one.

[Vedhin]

The big problem with the commoner railgun is using game rules and no physics for the first part, then using physics and no game rules for the 2nd part. You can't switch the laws of the multiverse part way through. Either the projectile reaches a peak velocity of around 30-40 mph or it moves past the speed of light without any relativistic or other special effects and life goes on. Pick one.

It actually goes in starts. It accelerates when the first commoner passes it to the second, decelerates in his possesion, the reaccelerates as he passes it, and so on.

[georgie_leech]

Quantum entanglement stuff still works. Quantum stuff doesn't play well with the rest of physics.

Well, it does, but it's... complicated.

A simple, nowhere near complete description is that Quantum Entanglement allows you to "guess" what the other half is doing. We don't have the information yet, because nothing is transferred, but we can theoretically work out what information will eventually reach us. The information isn't transferred, but we can act like it was.

[CombatOwl]

One of these days, I want to make a game where the players are living in an "evil empire" that uses slaves to form networks of commoner railguns for immediate communication between major cities, reanimated bodies guided by lone experts doing assembly line work in factories, locate city bombs as strategic weapons (obviously locate city would be a harshly restricted spell, very hard to acquire...), and other d&d absurdities. One of the PC would obviously need to be the child of someone who got rich in the ladder stripping business...

Leads to some kind of amusing adventure ideas, like having to stage a raid on a neighboring country to disrupt their development of Locate City...

[holywhippet]

D&D 4th edition has it's own special version of this abuse of the laws of physics. One of the monk powers lets them move around the battlefield and gain movement speed for every AoO they incur while moving. There's also an power a PC can use to ignore any damage below a certain value from any source (I think it works until the end of their next turn). Now, line up a whole lot of minions (like goblin cutters) that will do equal or less damage than the PC can ignore. Have the monk trigger both powers and begin moving along the line of minions. Each minion will take an AoO which increases the monk's speed. Even if they hit the monk can ignore the damage. The monk can keep moving as long as they haven't run out of minions.

[Vedhin]

A thread from the WotC boards that turned up on Google: this (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/2000536).
Apparently, other people have figured out how to abuse physics much further than we have. My spring/Ring Gate contraption was already invented here.



One of these days, I want to make a game where the players are living in an "evil empire" that uses slaves to form networks of commoner railguns for immediate communication between major cities, reanimated bodies guided by lone experts doing assembly line work in factories, locate city bombs as strategic weapons (obviously locate city would be a harshly restricted spell, very hard to acquire...), and other d&d absurdities. One of the PC would obviously need to be the child of someone who got rich in the ladder stripping business...

Leads to some kind of amusing adventure ideas, like having to stage a raid on a neighboring country to disrupt their development of Locate City...

If we manage to figure out everything for spaceships, I'm all for a campaign like this. I aim to also figure out cost in gp for ships, based on the component costs.


*use for Monk*

So now Monks can finally find a purpose. They're couriers!

[Yuki Akuma]

One of these days, I want to make a game where the players are living in an "evil empire" that uses slaves to form networks of commoner railguns for immediate communication between major cities, reanimated bodies guided by lone experts doing assembly line work in factories, locate city bombs as strategic weapons (obviously locate city would be a harshly restricted spell, very hard to acquire...), and other d&d absurdities. One of the PC would obviously need to be the child of someone who got rich in the ladder stripping business...

Leads to some kind of amusing adventure ideas, like having to stage a raid on a neighboring country to disrupt their development of Locate City...

I would play this. I would play this so hard.

[Shining Wrath]

Where these ideas fail is that a round is further sub-divided into Initiative Levels, and you have to have everyone lined up according to their Initiative order for this to work - and the Initiative order is discrete with a practical maximum for non-optimized-for-initiative characters of about 40. Of your tens of millions of fighters, millions have to act at the same initiative, and their actions are supposed to be simultaneous.

[Nettlekid]

Where these ideas fail is that a round is further sub-divided into Initiative Levels, and you have to have everyone lined up according to their Initiative order for this to work - and the Initiative order is discrete with a practical maximum for non-optimized-for-initiative characters of about 40. Of your tens of millions of fighters, millions have to act at the same initiative, and their actions are supposed to be simultaneous.

Higher Dex mod goes first. If a tie, rock-paper-scissors for it. They behave the same way that any characters would with the same initiative, one after the other. You say that people moving at the same initiative are supposed to have simultaneous actions, but that's true for everyone in the entire round!

[Shining Wrath]

Higher Dex mod goes first. If a tie, rock-paper-scissors for it. They behave the same way that any characters would with the same initiative, one after the other. You say that people moving at the same initiative are supposed to have simultaneous actions, but that's true for everyone in the entire round!

When you have millions of people at each initiative all plausible tiebreakers are exhausted with thousands of people at each tiebreaker. Resolve by init modifier? Still hundreds of thousands at each. Break those down by Dex? Still tens of thousands. Have them roll a D20? Still thousands.

At some point, you just have more people than RAW can handle and everyone has to act at the same time.

[georgie_leech]

When you have millions of people at each initiative all plausible tiebreakers are exhausted with thousands of people at each tiebreaker. Resolve by init modifier? Still hundreds of thousands at each. Break those down by Dex? Still tens of thousands. Have them roll a D20? Still thousands.

At some point, you just have more people than RAW can handle and everyone has to act at the same time.

Everyone already acts at the same time, in terms of what happens in those six seconds. RAW uses a turn format though because the logistics of Real Time Combat in Pen and Paper format is a little bit extreme.

[Yuki Akuma]

Where these ideas fail is that a round is further sub-divided into Initiative Levels, and you have to have everyone lined up according to their Initiative order for this to work - and the Initiative order is discrete with a practical maximum for non-optimized-for-initiative characters of about 40. Of your tens of millions of fighters, millions have to act at the same initiative, and their actions are supposed to be simultaneous.

It's possible to delay your action and to ready actions, you know.

[Ravens_cry]

Everyone already acts at the same time, in terms of what happens in those six seconds. RAW uses a turn format though because the logistics of Real Time Combat in Pen and Paper format is a little bit extreme.
Exactly. The rules are the interface to the imagined world. They are not the world itself.

[Segev]

Earlier, somebody commented that Teleport "isn't FTL" in a meaningful physical sense. However, it would have some very interesting properties in an otherwise Einsteinian universe. Namely, the fact that any information which can travel between locations faster than light can, under the right circumstances with the right relative speeds, be used to theoretically send information back in time within either of the reference frames.

Effectively, when you have two locations between which superluminal message transfer is superior to luminal message transfer for practical purposes, you can arrange their relative velocities and time-compressions (the "twin paradox" effect) such that sending a message at a sufficiently high speed between the two causes the reply to arrive at the "origin point" before the original message was sent.

[georgie_leech]

Earlier, somebody commented that Teleport "isn't FTL" in a meaningful physical sense. However, it would have some very interesting properties in an otherwise Einsteinian universe. Namely, the fact that any information which can travel between locations faster than light can, under the right circumstances with the right relative speeds, be used to theoretically send information back in time within either of the reference frames.

Effectively, when you have two locations between which superluminal message transfer is superior to luminal message transfer for practical purposes, you can arrange their relative velocities and time-compressions (the "twin paradox" effect) such that sending a message at a sufficiently high speed between the two causes the reply to arrive at the "origin point" before the original message was sent.

The next question is, what happens if you then send a message to the first origin point along the lines of "Received your message, do not send your message." Assuming the origin point is informed about the purpose of this experiment, after all.

[RFLS]

The next question is, what happens if you then send a message to the first origin point along the lines of "Received your message, do not send your message." Assuming the origin point is informed about the purpose of this experiment, after all.

At that point, the universe is torn asunder. Rainbows spill from the crevices, trailed by 1000-foot long mer-unicorns headed for the stars. A brief wave of rosemary and butter scent wafts over the entirety of Creation at once, and finally, Cthulhu emerges from his man-cave, tentacles akimbo, to deliver one final, simple ultimatum:

"STOP MESSING AROUND!"

[Vedhin]

The next question is, what happens if you then send a message to the first origin point along the lines of "Received your message, do not send your message." Assuming the origin point is informed about the purpose of this experiment, after all.

We get a time paradox. Unless the original sender sends it anyway.



At that point, the universe is torn asunder. Rainbows spill from the crevices, trailed by 1000-foot long mer-unicorns headed for the stars. A brief wave of rosemary and butter scent wafts over the entirety of Creation at once, and finally, Cthulhu emerges from his man-cave, tentacles akimbo, to deliver one final, simple ultimatum:

"STOP MESSING AROUND!"

Also this. But we can just make Cthultu implode or something. I'd like to see him survive a hit with a singularity.




Anyway, I have most of the basics down for spaceships. We just need long-range radar and some practical weapons systems. We can shoot singularities at things, but that's expensive and boring.

[Phelix-Mu]

We get a time paradox. Or the original sender sends it anyway.

Anyway, I have most of the basics down for spaceships. We just need long-range radar and some weapons systems.

Anything farther than the various scrying and so forth may be difficult. It's probably easiest to have invisible drone-probes that surround the ship at various intervals. Scry on them, see their surroundings, or chain of eyes on them (they'd have to be animated objects to have sight to borrow, though). Glassteel, if there is a decent 3e version, should allow one to see through the hull. Otherwise you could just run prying eyes.

I'd still go with the ice assassins of warforged warlocks for laser batteries. Ice assassins of ethereal defilers might also work, but we'd have to get a way to make them resistant to the void. I do like telekinesis on conjured rocks, though, but it's hard to make this practical without a mythal.

Energy transformation field is also quite exploitable (Spell Compendium). Get a dragon to breath on it every couple rounds, and it can power spam a spell forever. Of course, now we need a dragon...enter wyrm rod, from Epic Level Handbook.

Which brings up another point: outer space in D&D isn't like real space (at least if we are including Spelljammer in the interpretation of extraplanetary space). Phlogiston (I think that's it) actually has air, if I'm recalling correctly, and is interspersed by areas of true and partial void.

EDIT: It's Cthulu. Cthulu gives singularities nightmares. Not the other way around.

[Vedhin]

Anything farther than the various scrying and so forth may be difficult. It's probably easiest to have invisible drone-probes that surround the ship at various intervals. Scry on them, see their surroundings, or chain of eyes on them (they'd have to be animated objects to have sight to borrow, though). Glassteel, if there is a decent 3e version, should allow one to see through the hull. Otherwise you could just run prying eyes.

Invisible drone probes would work best. We could Permanancy Telepathic Bond to recieve feedback quickly. The main problem is the possibility of collisionsm and keeping up with the ship.
Scrying is a no-go, unfortunately. I'm planning on using a Weirdstone (PGtF) as a cloaking device, which blocks out [teleportation], , and ethereal and astral travel in a 6 mile radius. We could still scry out from inside though.
There are two Glassteel verisons in 3.X. The 3.0 one is useful, and the 3.5 one isn't. Either would still be workable for this.



I'd still go with the ice assassins of warforged warlocks for laser batteries. Ice assassins of ethereal defilers might also work, but we'd have to get a way to make them resistant to the void. I do like telekinesis on conjured rocks, though, but it's hard to make this practical without a mythal.

The main problem is range. Eldritch Blast maxes at 250ft with the right blast shape, and we need further for space battles.



Energy transformation field is also quite exploitable (Spell Compendium). Get a dragon to breath on it every couple rounds, and it can power spam a spell forever. Of course, now we need a dragon...enter wyrm rod, from Epic Level Handbook.

Just have a high-level warlock spam a Dark invoction.
If we're considering epic items, I'm giving our living ship a ring of sequestering. That+wierdstone should make it undetectable.



Which brings up another point: outer space in D&D isn't like real space (at least if we are including Spelljammer in the interpretation of extraplanetary space). Phlogiston (I think that's it) actually has air, if I'm recalling correctly, and is interspersed by areas of true and partial void.

We don't actually care so much about that. With enough Bottles of Air, we can function with gaping holes in the hull.



EDIT: It's Cthulu. Cthulu gives singularities nightmares. Not the other way around.

Then we will [S]fight in the shademake the singularites implode!

[Ravens_cry]

Earlier, somebody commented that Teleport "isn't FTL" in a meaningful physical sense. However, it would have some very interesting properties in an otherwise Einsteinian universe. Namely, the fact that any information which can travel between locations faster than light can, under the right circumstances with the right relative speeds, be used to theoretically send information back in time within either of the reference frames.

Effectively, when you have two locations between which superluminal message transfer is superior to luminal message transfer for practical purposes, you can arrange their relative velocities and time-compressions (the "twin paradox" effect) such that sending a message at a sufficiently high speed between the two causes the reply to arrive at the "origin point" before the original message was sent.
Since you could do the same thing with an FTL craft, that, and the fact it gets you to your destination, is why I call greater teleport 'effective FTL' for most purposes.

[Phelix-Mu]

That's why I like the rocks. Once you get them up to their velocity, just let them go. If there is no atmosphere or gravity in the area, their damage should maintain indefinitely.

Project image can solve some range issues for spells, but not by a huge amount. Tippy is going to come in and recommed that we shapechange into a spellweaver, pick up Mindsight, and then use Far Shot to shoot things 1000 miles away. That method is actually pretty tempting, frankly.



We don't actually care so much about that. With enough Bottles of Air, we can function with gaping holes in the hull.

Not sure this is true. If there is an actual void outside, even with an infinite supply of air in the ship, you will still suffer powerful decompression from air leaving through the gaps. This will cause a powerful current of air to be leaving the ship. Not too hard to fix, as there are legion ways to "plug holes" in D&D.

[AstralFire]

Thinking over this, a good place to start would be stop-motion jumping. The Jump rules specify that if you Jump further than your speed, it takes you multiple rounds to finish your jump. If you can swing a bonus action between turns (Lesser Celerity maybe?), you can double-jump. So someone with immunity to daze and some way of casting Lesser Celerity a lot can fly by jumping.

I knew this would come in handy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6684658).

[Ravens_cry]

I knew this would come in handy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6684658).
The song at the end caps it beautifully.:smallbiggrin:

[Phelix-Mu]

It was a close race, with RFLS, georgie, an angry elder god putting up a good effort, but

ASTRALFIRE HAS JUST WON THIS THREAD.

[Vedhin]

Tippy is going to come in and recommed that we shapechange into a spellweaver, pick up Mindsight, and then use Far Shot to shoot things 1000 miles away. That method is actually pretty tempting, frankly.

That does sound like a good idea. If we can get a Binder with that one vestige for infinite divinations, that should stop collisions. We can get by with just the Binder though.



Not sure this is true. If there is an actual void outside, even with an infinite supply of air in the ship, you will still suffer powerful decompression from air leaving through the gaps. This will cause a powerful current of air to be leaving the ship. Not too hard to fix, as there are legion ways to "plug holes" in D&D.

Hmm, true. A big hole would suck people out. Bottles of Air would handle smaller ones, but we would actually need someone to handle large ones.


It was a close race, with RFLS, georgie, an angry elder god putting up a good effort, but

ASTRALFIRE HAS JUST WON THIS THREAD.

No, he won that other thread. This one is still up for grabs.



For weapons, I'm basically down to magic traps. If we stick long range spells with the enlarge spell metamagic feat applied, we can get decent enough range.

Edit: Actually, I'll just use magic traps. We now have:

Ship's Computer: Permanancied Animate Objects+Awaken Construct
Warp Drive (with the equivalent of Perfect maneuverability): combination of Ring Gates, Portable Holes, Quintessence, and Reverse Gravity
Cloaking Device: Wierdstone+Ring of Sequestering
Deflector Shields: Permanancied Walls of Force. Ring Gates optional for ability to take down the shields.
Food Synthesizer: Create Food and Water trap
Life Support: Bottles of Air
Weapons Systems: various magic traps
Navigaton Computer: Binder with Astaroth (the Dragon Magazine #357 one)

To do:
Cheaper Cloaking Device
Navigaton Computer without Dragon Magazine stuff