Tenser's Floating Landspeeder?

[Palanan]

Is there any way, using either 3.5 or Pathfinder spells, to create an economical hoversled or the equivalent?

"Economical" is key here, because I'm looking for something affordable by an ordinary person, who won't have thousands of gold pieces to spare. Is there a way to bring hoversleds to the masses?

[Jowgen]

I humby submit the Talsiman of the Disk for consideration (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?385848-Disciple-of-Tenser-A-Guide-to-Maximum-Tenser-s-Floating-Disk-Utility)

[Ruethgar]

It should also be noted that NPCs have greater wealth than adventures and a decent house can be fairly cheap and still include Wondrous Architecture 5ft Rune Circles for various modern conveniences in the form of spells.

[Inevitability]

1. Find and kill a giant squid.
2. Desecrate the area.
3. Cast Create Undead on the squid corpse to create a bone creature. Hack a comfortable seat into the resulting undead cartilage.
4. Put an item of continuous Levitate on the squid monster.
5. Mount the squid.

You can now use Jet to move 320 feet a round, with the ability to ascend or descend as you'd like. Compare that to humans (120 feet) or racing horses (300 feet). And remember: your ghastly floating piece of cuttlebone won't ever tire.

[Necroticplague]

1. Find and kill a giant squid.
2. Desecrate the area.
3. Cast Create Undead on the squid corpse to create a bone creature. Hack a comfortable seat into the resulting undead cartilage.
4. Put an item of continuous Levitate on the squid monster.
5. Mount the squid.

You can now use Jet to move 320 feet a round, with the ability to ascend or descend as you'd like. Compare that to humans (120 feet) or racing horses (300 feet). And remember: your ghastly floating piece of cuttlebone won't ever tire.

Unless I'm missing something, I don't think something without any bones can be considered to have a skeletal system, so you'd need to go for Corpse, not Bone.

[ahenobarbi]

Unless I'm missing something, I don't think something without any bones can be considered to have a skeletal system, so you'd need to go for Corpse, not Bone.

Squids have hydrostatic skeletons.

[ahenobarbi]

More on topic. The cheapest I can get is Command word activated item of Tenser Disk (caster level 1), 1/day, limited to class of first owner, requiring rank in profession (Tenser Disk driver), bound to colossal elemental, made of Fey Cherry Wood, costing:

1800 * 1 (spell level) * 1 (CL) * (1/5) (1/day) * .7 (class req) * .9 (skill req) * .8 (elemental) * .9 (wood) = 163.3 gp

This will allow 1 hour of flight per day, if you want non-stop flight drop the 1/day part and the cost increases to 816.48gp (you still need to stop every hour to move to a new disk).

[Big Fau]

The Firesled from Secrets of Xen'Drik, but that's not exactly cheap (76K).

[Bronk]

Perhaps an enlarged, hasted flumph cohort?

[Ruethgar]

More on topic. The cheapest I can get is Command word activated item of Tenser Disk (caster level 1), 1/day, limited to class of first owner, requiring rank in profession (Tenser Disk driver), bound to colossal elemental, made of Fey Cherry Wood, costing:

1800 * 1 (spell level) * 1 (CL) * (1/5) (1/day) * .7 (class req) * .9 (skill req) * .8 (elemental) * .9 (wood) = 163.3 gp

This will allow 1 hour of flight per day, if you want non-stop flight drop the 1/day part and the cost increases to 816.48gp (you still need to stop every hour to move to a new disk).
If you make stations where you can get said disks, you can make then Wondrous Architecture 5ft Rune Circles to lower the at will price to 81.648gp. make the crafter an Awakened Advanced Monkey Commoner 6 with that one Complete Arcane feat for minor SLAs including the Disk. Scribe Scroll, Exceptional Artisan, Extraordinary Artisan, Magical Artisan, Magical Artisan, Craft Rune Circle at the other feats. If you can retrain the Light Armor, go with Legeandary Artisan. If you can shuffle the Weapon Finesse, another Magical Artisan.

[Sapreaver]

What about a resetting telekinesis trap for every couple seconds while a lever is pressed. That targets it's self in the direction it's facing at a 45 degree angle. Also the object is animated and has feather fall cast on it. So you ride in a single direction until you decide to stop and it falls slowly with you on it?

I've never made traps so I don't know the cost.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Jowgen
I humby submit the Talsiman of the Disk for consideration….

Very interesting, thanks. A little more expensive than I'd been hoping, but I can work with this.


Originally Posted by Ruethgar
It should also be noted that NPCs have greater wealth than adventure[r]s….

Hm. Looking at the NPC wealth table in the 3.5 DMG, it looks as if NPCs start with an edge and then fall behind starting at third level. In the Pathfinder CRB, an NPC starts behind and stays behind. Are there other tables I'm missing?


Originally Posted by Dire_Stirge
1. Find and kill a giant squid.

Ask for a landspeeder, get a giant undead squid. That's my Playground.

:smalltongue:

[Jack_Simth]

Indirectly, yes.

Automatic Reset Magic Device traps (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#magicDeviceTrapCost) of Extended Phantom Steed (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/phantomSteed.htm) at caster level 14 should do the job. 4th level spell, caster level 14, lasts 28 hours, costs: 500 * 4 * 14 gp and 40 * 4 * 14 xp = 28,000 gp and 2,240 xp to make. Yes, that's a lot, however after it's built you don't have any expenses, and it can service a very large number of people. Essentially a car rental place - someone makes the 'trap' and rents access. If you charge one gold piece, and can average 100 customers per day, you're grossing 36,500 gp/year, but each customer is only paying 365 gp/year for 24/7 use. Downside: It's not mobile, so it can really only be used when people expect to get there and back in a day (unless, of course, you have a station at their destination and relevant midpoints as well, based on the duration)... but with a move of 240 feet, that's actually a pretty fair range.

Note: The math is flexible. If you instead charge a silver and can average 1,000 customers a day, it's the same rate of return.

[Afgncaap5]

The Firesled from Secrets of Xen'Drik, but that's not exactly cheap (76K).

Yeah, the cost of these things sneak up on ya. The Soarsled from Sharn, City Of Towers is a decent item (even outside of a manifest zone where its magic is strongest) but I just looked it up again and saw it priced at thirty-eight thousand. Not ideal for the adventurer on a budget.

[Inevitability]

Ask for a landspeeder, get a giant undead squid. That's my Playground.

I kind of want to sig this now.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Afgncaap5
Yeah, the cost of these things sneak up on ya. The Soarsled from Sharn, City Of Towers is a decent item (even outside of a manifest zone where its magic is strongest) but I just looked it up again and saw it priced at thirty-eight thousand. Not ideal for the adventurer on a budget.

Yup, it's pricey even for an adventurer, and I'm trying to come up with something that ordinary folk could afford.


Originally Posted by Palanan
Ask for a landspeeder, get a giant undead squid. That's my Playground.


Originally Posted by Dire_Stirge
I kind of want to sig this now.

By all means, feel free.

:smallsmile:

[Afgncaap5]

Yup, it's pricey even for an adventurer, and I'm trying to come up with something that ordinary folk could afford.

Welllllllll.....

Are you the GM or the player? And if the player, how lenient is the GM?

If you have access to the Eberron Campaign Setting and are incredibly, ridiculously lenient with how you read things, it is possible to imbue Eberron/bloodstone shards with individual spells (in this case, flight.) Items that are pretty much just meant to "radiate" spells, like an everbright lantern, or items that are meant to be constantly "at the ready" for making it possible to cast, like a scrying shard, are often much, much cheaper than they might otherwise be with the rules. You either have an item that costs about 100 gp (and then gets a few other material costs added in) or you have an on-the-cheap magic item cost, that then gets added to the 100 gp cost. RAI, this was mostly just supposed to allow a few custom items while also saying that all magic items need Eberron shards when they're not using something else, but it opens up a few possibilities for GMs who want to hand-wave things. Case in point, I once had a player reach Xen'Drik, get overwhelmed by humidity, and demand some magical way to make him cooler. House Lyrandar was, fortunately, ready and eager to sell him a statue of a wind spirit carefully carved from an Eberron shard that, when properly set up, would just continually blow a low-grade gust of wind spell, allowing for constant air-conditioned freshness.

If you want a society where people just sort of have this as a technology...

The cost of a dragonshard imbued with the Fly spell is 100 gp, cost of a good solid chain to represent a harness is 30 gp and a masterwork manacle is 50 gp (you wouldn't want people wearing all this to fall, after all), and then you've got a cost of 150 gp. You can then add in 20 to 100 gp more for the "secret" off-the-books component that allows whoever knows how to make this stuff to do their work that other wizards haven't figured out yet (or have, it's up to you) and to cover the cost of manufacturing and putting it all together. That'd give you Frobwitt's Miraculous Flight-Suit at a cost of between 150 gp and 250 gp. I don't know that that's cheap enough for your average, everyday commoner to buy them, but it's probably closer to the ballpark you need.



Now, if that's all too hand-wavy and non-RAW for your tastes... I think the cheapest other available option is, according to the List of Necessary Magic Items, the Amber Amulet of Vermin. 800 gp, throat-slot magic item, once a day allows a giant insect to appear for one minute who can, in addition to other things, fly your around.

[Fizban]

Uh, no. With emphasis,

A spellcaster can attune an Eberron shard to a specific spell, enhancing the effect of that spell when it is cast on the shard.
The Everbright Lantern specifically works the way it does because Continual Flame is already a permanent spell, as noted a few paragraphs down under "Crafting Eberron Shard Items," the dragonshard has nothing to do with it "radiating" the spell constantly. The actual effect of the spellshard in this case is to change the illuminated area from torch to bullseye lantern, a substantial upgrade if used correctly but in terms of "power" all it does is turn a torch into a lantern.*

The Scrying Shard is a handwave, a 1,000gp focus (the most expensive scrying focus cost) with a 100gp dragonshard surcharge to make it useable by anyone instead of just arcane casters. It does absolutely nothing on it's own.

The best you could do with a 100gp spellshard is "enhance" the spell by not actually increasing anything, say a Tenser's Distributed Disk that can transfer ownership of the spell to the holder of the shard item. You could make a more expensive shard that actually enhances the spell, but it would demand an ad-hoc price of at least the equivalent value of whatever it can accomplish, and would still require casting the spell.

The hack for making low-priced magic items is pretty simple: there are in fact some magic items priced not with magic item formulae, but based on the mundane items they are replacing. When in doubt, double the price because magic and convenience, so long as it's not actually better than the original. So what exactly is it you want? If you want hoversleds because they look cool but don't actually want anything more than a normal cart, that's gonna be cheap. If you want hoversleds to ignore all possible penalties of terrain including lava and potentially fly, that's gonna take actual magic. Also note that Eberron, for all it's vaunted magic trains, has no price for Conductor Stones. They new perfectly well that any cost higher than that of actual train track would make the whole system fall apart and so it is mysteriously absent.

*The only reason you can't just cast Continual Flame inside a bullseye lantern for the same effect is because Continual Flame's radius is not the same as that of a normal lantern, it's 20' instead of 30'. The bullseye is based on a stronger light source, assuming the same multipliers a 40' continual bullseye is pretty lackluster. Or you can fudge a gp cost to gloss over it.

[khadgar567]

Uh, no. With emphasis,

The Everbright Lantern specifically works the way it does because Continual Flame is already a permanent spell, as noted a few paragraphs down under "Crafting Eberron Shard Items," the dragonshard has nothing to do with it "radiating" the spell constantly. The actual effect of the spellshard in this case is to change the illuminated area from torch to bullseye lantern, a substantial upgrade if used correctly but in terms of "power" all it does is turn a torch into a lantern.*

The Scrying Shard is a handwave, a 1,000gp focus (the most expensive scrying focus cost) with a 100gp dragonshard surcharge to make it useable by anyone instead of just arcane casters. It does absolutely nothing on it's own.

The best you could do with a 100gp spellshard is "enhance" the spell by not actually increasing anything, say a Tenser's Distributed Disk that can transfer ownership of the spell to the holder of the shard item. You could make a more expensive shard that actually enhances the spell, but it would demand an ad-hoc price of at least the equivalent value of whatever it can accomplish, and would still require casting the spell.

The hack for making low-priced magic items is pretty simple: there are in fact some magic items priced not with magic item formulae, but based on the mundane items they are replacing. When in doubt, double the price because magic and convenience, so long as it's not actually better than the original. So what exactly is it you want? If you want hoversleds because they look cool but don't actually want anything more than a normal cart, that's gonna be cheap. If you want hoversleds to ignore all possible penalties of terrain including lava and potentially fly, that's gonna take actual magic. Also note that Eberron, for all it's vaunted magic trains, has no price for Conductor Stones. They new perfectly well that any cost higher than that of actual train track would make the whole system fall apart and so it is mysteriously absent.

*The only reason you can't just cast Continual Flame inside a bullseye lantern for the same effect is because Continual Flame's radius is not the same as that of a normal lantern, it's 20' instead of 30'. The bullseye is based on a stronger light source, assuming the same multipliers a 40' continual bullseye is pretty lackluster. Or you can fudge a gp cost to gloss over it.
source for eberon item please