What's the fastest way to the moon and back?

[soldersbushwack]

What's the fastest and lowest level way you can bring a player character to the moon and back? Your character must successfully survive 24 hours on the moon's surface. Then your character must go back to earth and then survive 24 hours.

If a setting is required then the setting is Forgotten Realms and you start on the continent of Faerun on Toril and must go to Toril's moon Selune and back.

Assume that unless the setting specifies otherwise things are the same as our reality.

[daremetoidareyo]

What's the fastest and lowest level way you can bring a player character to the moon and back? Your character must successfully survive 24 hours on the moon's surface. Then your character must go back to earth and then survive 24 hours.

If a setting is required then the setting is Forgotten Realms and you start on the continent of Faerun on Toril and must go to Toril's moon Selune and back.

Assume that unless the setting specifies otherwise things are the same as our reality.

If you can make a ranged touch attack using a piton, (cragtop archer? DWK distant shot cheese) you can use hammer and piton feat to make a climb check against the moon's AC to occupy its space.

[noob]

level 1: chicken infested commoner necropolitan.
You can live without breathing and you fill all the earth squares of chicken(in one round with spell component pouch) thus sending you to the nearest free space: the moon.
Then wait 24 hours there will be surely a lot of chickens which will have died thus freeing space on earth.
Fill all the moon squares with chicken thus sending you to the earth.
The ecological catastrophe is an added bonus.

[Scots Dragon]

Step One: polymorph any object (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/polymorphAnyObject.htm) self into a being immune to cold and without need to breathe. An earth elemental or a golem should do it, and making that last for more than twenty-four hours shouldn't be too difficult.
Step Two: greater teleport (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleportGreater.htm)
Step Three: greater teleport (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleportGreater.htm) again after the 24 hours are up.

[soldersbushwack]

Narsil, why not Plane Shift twice instead of Greater Teleport? Also, you probably want to use scrolls or wands instead so that you can do this at a lower level.

[noob]

Still the lowest level for that is 1 and the fastest way is the one I gave(since you need no preliminary preparations and that it takes only free actions for both trips)
However it needs dragon magazine.

[Bronk]

Teleportation would be the fastest way.

Other than that, you could fly up in a flying ship. How easy that is depends on how much Forgotten Realms lore is being used. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting indicates on page 230 that sages believe the moon to be inhabited, and that's because back in the Spelljammer setting, there was a port there, with a small civilization, with plenty of air and other planet-like things there, and with the whole thing covered by a moon sized illusion to hide it from Toril. If that's the lore for your world, then you could technically just go to the nearest big city and hire a ride to Selune at first level.

[Jormengand]

I love how the first two replies are both tricks I came up with.

[soldersbushwack]

Bronk wouldn't most flying ships be rather slow?

Assuming overland flight based ships that would be 64 miles/ 8 hours = 102998m / 8 hours = 308994 m / day.

Assuming Selune is about 3.8 x 10^8 m away flying there would require 1230 days.

That's doable but still a bit slow.

Is there a reference on how fast airships on Toril are?

[LordOfCain]

Commoner railgun?

[soldersbushwack]

LordOfCain, the Commoner railgun doesn't preserve momentum so you'd need to make a Commoner space elevator (possibly made of Warforged or Zombies.) The intense weight of the space elevator would make construction impossible though. I wonder what the tensile strength of level 20 Warforged Commoners is?

[Jormengand]

A level 1 monk wearing a throwing distant shot necklace of natural attacks +1 can flurry of blows to throw himself at the moon and then the earth. No word on what happens if you miss, though.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Two scrolls of Plane **** and a Necklace of Adaptation. 7th level, assuming the "can't have an item costing more than half your starting WBL" rules are in effect.


A level 1 monk wearing a throwing distant shot necklace of natural attacks +1 can flurry of blows to throw himself at the moon and then the earth. No word on what happens if you miss, though.
Requires an epic magic item, though. Greater Teleport is much earlier.

[soldersbushwack]

Grod_The_Giant don't you mean four scrolls of Plane Shift? You need to get to the moon and back. Unless the Plane Shift spell is even more broken than I thought? Also, that'd require focus rods for the Material Plane and some other plane.

[Morcleon]

A level 1 psion with two powerstones of greater teleport, a powerstone of adapt body at ML 12, and a bunch of UPD boosting. :smalltongue:

[Jay R]

Start on the moon, as a member of a race that can live there.
Take one step to the north. You are now on the moon.
Wait 24 hours.
Take one step to the south. You are now back where you started.
Wait 24 hours.

[soldersbushwack]

Start on the moon, as a member of a race that can live there.
Take one step to the north. You are now on the moon.
Wait 24 hours.
Take one step to the south. You are now back where you started.
Wait 24 hours.


If a setting is required then the setting is Forgotten Realms and you start on the continent of Faerun on Toril and must go to Toril's moon Selune and back.

You must think you're so clever.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Grod_The_Giant don't you mean four scrolls of Plane Shift? You need to get to the moon and back. Unless the Plane Shift spell is even more broken than I thought? Also, that'd require focus rods for the Material Plane and some other plane.
Aaah, you're right. Unless the moon counts as a different plane, I suppose. Not sure what FR lore is on that front.

[soldersbushwack]

Incidentally, Pathfinder in one of their splats chose to rule that plane shifting to different planets requires different focus rods. I think this would be a sensible house rule for a DM to implement.

[Extra Anchovies]

Cheesing a Wish for an item of use-activated Greater Teleport can be done from 1st level.

Have the conditions of Selune's surface been described in any official source? If not, we should probably assume the 2d6 [cold or fire] + 1d4 [untyped] damage caused by being in space, as per Nailed to the Sky (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/nailedToTheSky.htm).

[Bronk]

Bronk wouldn't most flying ships be rather slow?

Assuming overland flight based ships that would be 64 miles/ 8 hours = 102998m / 8 hours = 308994 m / day.

Assuming Selune is about 3.8 x 10^8 m away flying there would require 1230 days.

That's doable but still a bit slow.

Is there a reference on how fast airships on Toril are?

I don't think regular airships are any faster or slower than other ships (probably slower than ships from eberron though). Spelljammers, on the other hand, go crazy fast, and could probably get you there in a few hours. It only takes days to get from one planet to another, so a planet to its own moon would be easy.

If Spelljamming isn't an option, you could use Gather Information or some other knowledge skill to hire a ship with 'planar sails', that could then take two 10 minute planar hops to the Elemental Plane of Air and back to get you very close to the moon, then use magic to fly you in the rest of the way. If you can't find a ship with planar sails, the sails cost 72,000 gold.

Teleportation is fast, but if they're using the established lore that the moon is covered in illusion, you wouldn't be able to port directly there without a number of knowledge checks or a 'wish', because even a 'greater teleport' requires a 'reliable description' of the area to work.

[Milo v3]

Incidentally, Pathfinder in one of their splats chose to rule that plane shifting to different planets requires different focus rods. I think this would be a sensible house rule for a DM to implement.

That's only in the Golarion setting technically.

[Necroticplague]

1: Necropolitan should survive on the moon for 24 hours, no problem. No real reason for the undead body to be effected by low pressure, and don't need to breath.
2: Wish can move a creature from one place to another, no ifs, ands, or buts.
3: One can afford a Candle of Invocation using WBL by 5 level.

So use the Candle to Gate in an efreeti, then wish for another Candle of Invocation, a Bottle of Air, then to be sent to the moon. Hang out for the needed 24 hours, light the other candle (using the bottle of air to provide enough air to light it), then wish yourself back to wherever you started from.

[Âmesang]

This thought has crossed my mind in recent months after a character obtained a necklace of adaptation, though it was in regards to Oerth's moons, Luna and Celene. I'm definitely one to opt for the greater teleport method, with endure elements and protection from energy to help stave off extreme heat/cold. Either way it makes me happy to have obtained some SPELLJAMMER™ supplements for WORLD OF GREYHAWK®, FORGOTTEN REALMS®, and DRAGONLANCE®, even if 2nd Edition; the way I see it, if it isn't wholly contradicted it's still good. :smalltongue:

Though why bring the character to the moon when you can bring the moon to the character? :smallbiggrin:

[digiman619]

You're all wrong; the fastest way to get to the moon is to piss off Princess Celestia!:smallbiggrin:

[ryu]

You're all wrong; the fastest way to get to the moon is to piss off Princess Celestia!:smallbiggrin:

Surely doing that hard enough to succeed would take more than six seconds?

[AvatarVecna]

Surely doing that hard enough to succeed would take more than six seconds?

Nah, that's not the problem; all it takes is making a melee touch attack to initiate a "special" grapple, and she'll get pretty ticked off, presumably. The problem with this particular method is that she might not send you to the moon, but might instead use the no doubt wide variety of lethal magical techniques she knows.

[ryu]

Nah, that's not the problem; all it takes is making a melee touch attack to initiate a "special" grapple, and she'll get pretty ticked off, presumably. The problem with this particular method is that she might not send you to the moon, but might instead use the no doubt wide variety of lethal magical techniques she knows.

I dunno... She generally seems pretty pacifistic. I mean I may be forgetting something but has she ever even been shown to fight outside direct threat to herself, her kingdom, or subjects in her presence?

[AvatarVecna]

I dunno... She generally seems pretty pacifistic. I mean I may be forgetting something but has she ever even been shown to fight outside direct threat to herself, her kingdom, or subjects in her presence?

She's barely ever shown fighting, but my point was more that, regardless of whether you could pull off something offensive enough in 6 seconds to get her to unleash her full power (which I think you could, but would have to be unbelievably offensive to work), getting punted to the moon is a pretty unlikely outcome, just from the sheer number of options she likely has at her disposal.

[digiman619]

Wait. I forgot it included the return trip. THAT part will take 1,000 years...

[ryu]

She's barely ever shown fighting, but my point was more that, regardless of whether you could pull off something offensive enough in 6 seconds to get her to unleash her full power (which I think you could, but would have to be unbelievably offensive to work), getting punted to the moon is a pretty unlikely outcome, just from the sheer number of options she likely has at her disposal.

Oh I get it. So you're saying the plan fails because you have to accomplish the anger part after spending a long period of time getting far enough into her good graces that she'd refuse to kill you.

[Coidzor]

Wait. I forgot it included the return trip. THAT part will take 1,000 years...

Hope you brought a deck of cards.

[ryu]

Hope you brought a deck of cards.

Too much chance of randomly dying because of it.

[Bronk]

You're all wrong; the fastest way to get to the moon is to piss off Princess Celestia!:smallbiggrin:

For the win!