Author Topic: Comparison/Contrast of various Flying Ship options-could you all double-check?  (Read 9982 times)

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Gavinfoxx

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So I'm trying to compare and contrast the many many many many options for making a flying ship in D&D.  Could you all read this little quick guide I wrote up, and add any comments as to the pros and cons of each method?  Also, have I missed anything?

Getting it Aloft Options:

Option 1:

That Flying Ship in the Forgotten Realms book "Shining South"

Pros: Traditional to FR. Looks like a ship -- A Wondrous Item
Cons: Needs a Huge Crew. Wooden, and normal wood even. Expensive. Slow. Looks like a ship... uses Wind Power to move.  Utterly vulnerable to natural antimagic area.

Option 2:

Eberron Style Flying Ships -- a Wondrous Item, uses alchemically treated "Soarwood", and a bound elemental in a ring

Pros: Fast. Traditional to Eberron. Relatively Inexpensive. Lighter than Air -- will float, even in an antimagic area.
Cons: That type of elemental binding likely isn't ethical.  Soarwood isn't too terribly durable.  Locomotion doesn't work in a natural antimagic area, just the floating.  Probably needs a crew too (will have to check)

Option 3: Enchanting a Stronghold Space using the Stronghold Builder's Guide rules

Pros: Can be made of lots of interesting materials--not necessarily wood! Gives movement for interplanar options.  Can be quite fast.  Gives swimming/earthgliding/etc options
Cons: If you use these rules for the main way of doing locomotion, then the price starts adding up real quick.  Very vulnerable to a natural antimagic area.

Option 4: Making the ship an Effigy

Pros: Self Locomotion! Can follow orders! Can look like an animal or wyvern with added hit dice (and thus size) or whatever! Can fly on it's own power!  It can fly and move about in antimagic area!
Cons: Has a low number of hit points, so it can be 'killed' with direct hit point damage.  Arguably not a con -- most of the rules for vehicles have them with low hit points anyway for some reason.  It's not necessarily a smart ship at this point.  Will need to flap it's wings to stay aloft.  Might need some house rules to get the right form of an effigy. Will need silly template stacking to not be too vulnerable.  Might be targeted by intimidated people.

Option 5: Using the actual spell in Shining South that is the basis of their ships, maybe in a Spell Clock or something
Pros: Really, Really cheap. I mean, a schema or wand or whatever of this would be REDICULOUSLY cheap. Can get very large amounts of weight aloft.  Did I mention cheap?
Cons: Suppressed in an area of natural antimagic.  It requires spells to be actively cast, either by a person activating a wondrous item, or casting the spell from their list, or a Spell Clock automatically casting it, which removes lots of the 'really cheap' benefit.

Locomotion Options not part of the above:

Option 1: Get some tireless flying creature to pull it

Pro: You get a few flying effigies to pull your swank flying boat! Awesome!  They can keep it moving in an antimagic field, cool!
Con: They can be targeted, and are vulnerable.  Also the cables or ropes connecting them to the ship can be targeted.  Also, having separate creatures from the ship providing movement to it gives miscellaneous problems of their own.

Option 2: Decanter of Endless Water + Riverine Nozzle + Maybe something to heat it to steam or something

Pro: THRUST. LOTS AND LOTS of thrust. Like, if you do things right, maybe Space Shuttle level of thrust (really!)
Con: You are spewing lots of water (or steam, if you added some bits to it to heat it) behind you. This might upset people / the weather / the Druid / certain creatures.  Suppressed in Antimagic area.  Also, someone generally has to interact with this item to get it to do stuff. Also, problems with aiming the thrust.

Getting it Intelligence

Option 1: Haunt Shift

Pro: An easy way to get it intelligence.
Con: Evil, uses negative energy.  Makes it, you know, haunted. Might not always let the inhabiting spirit have full control over everything.    Requires some intelligent undead to start with.  To bypass these issues (ie, get a Deathless / positive energy version), will need LOTS of DM Fiat / Custom spell research / questing.  Probably supressed in antimagic.

Option 2: Embedding a Sentient Magic Item in the structure/workings somewhere

Pro: Fairly easy to accomplish.  Gives it Sentience.
Con: Will probably only work well with the Effigy version, and only if there's some way to link the commands of the magic item to what the Effigy does.  Might not give it control over all the ancillary aspects of the ship, unless it has access to lots of unseen servants / mage hand / etc. sorts of things.  Probably supressed in Antimagic.
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veekie

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The important bit....can you fit a Capital Ship Laser on one?
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Gavinfoxx

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The important bit....can you fit a Capital Ship Laser on one?

Sorry, Spell Turrets can't have Enlarge Spell built into them, as near as I can tell... and you'd need a Ray that has Long Range AND is Enlarged, and I don't know of any...
« Last Edit: November 23, 2010, 09:52:58 AM by Gavinfoxx »
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Prime32

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You could always reconfigure a lightning rail into a coilgun...
Option 1: Get some tireless flying creature to pull it

Pro: You get a few flying effigies to pull your swank flying boat! Awesome!  They can keep it moving in an antimagic field, cool!
Con: They can be targeted, and are vulnerable.  Also the cables or ropes connecting them to the ship can be targeted.  Also, having separate creatures from the ship providing movement to it gives miscellaneous problems of their own.
So put them inside the ship. If you're not worried about antimagic, you can use levitate on sections of the ship to make them weightless.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2010, 10:17:46 AM by Prime32 »
My work
The tier system in a nutshell:
[spoiler]Tier 6: A cartographer.
Tier 5: An expert cartographer or a decent marksman.
Tier 4: An expert marksman.
Tier 3: An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation or a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

veekie

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Maybe a Boreal Wind could work.
The mind transcends the body.
It's also a little cold because of that.
Please get it a blanket.

I wish I could read your mind,
I can barely read mine.

"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. At 2:15, it begins rolling up characters."

[spoiler]
"Just what do you think the moon up in the sky is? Everyone sees that big, round shiny thing and thinks there must be something round up there, right? That's just silly. The truth is much more awesome than that. You can almost never see the real Moon, and its appearance is death to humans. You can only see the Moon when it's reflected in things. And the things it reflects in, like water or glass, can all be broken, right? Since the moon you see in the sky is just being reflected in the heavens, if you tear open the heavens it's easy to break it~"
-Ibuki Suika, on overkill

To sumbolaion diakoneto moi, basilisk ouranionon.
Epigenentheto, apoleia keraune hos timeis pteirei.
Hekatonkatis kai khiliakis astrapsato.
Khiliarkhou Astrape!
[/spoiler]

There is no higher price than 'free'.

"I won't die. I've been ordered not to die."

RelentlessImp

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You missed one. And they exist in every campaign setting that has illithid.

Option X: Nautiloids.
Pros: Flies like a champ. Can leave the atmosphere. Can take you to a real campaign setting.
Cons: Finding one of the damn things because the Elder Brains hide them. Need a spellcaster for a full-time pilot burning spell slots.
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Option XI: Astral Skiff from Planar Handbook

Pros: fast, manuverable, and easy to use.  Also will still fly in an AMF

Cons: Only works on the Astral Plane

Option XII: Gate Zepplin from Planar Handbook

Pros: mundane flight and propulsion,, can hover, can Gate to another plane 1/day

Cons: slow and big targets.  getting a good place to set down is difficult.
I am constantly amazed by how many DM's ban Tomb of Battle.  The book doesn't even exist!

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Prime32

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Option XIII: Create a magic item which duplicates the effects of a movement spell and wall of force. In other words, it floats on command and surrounds itself with a barrier.

Antimagic fields cannot penetrate wall of force. Build a ship around them.
My work
The tier system in a nutshell:
[spoiler]Tier 6: A cartographer.
Tier 5: An expert cartographer or a decent marksman.
Tier 4: An expert marksman.
Tier 3: An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation or a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

Solo

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Any way we could use a permanent Wall of Fire and a Decanter of Endless Water to make a plasma drive?

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Prime32

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Any way we could use a permanent Wall of Fire and a Decanter of Endless Water to make a plasma drive?
Two decanters of endless water and some sovereign glue will create a singularity, right?

I'm not sure how that "plasma drive" would work, nor how it would be more efficient than simply firing the decanter directly at a waterwheel.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2010, 05:10:32 PM by Prime32 »
My work
The tier system in a nutshell:
[spoiler]Tier 6: A cartographer.
Tier 5: An expert cartographer or a decent marksman.
Tier 4: An expert marksman.
Tier 3: An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation or a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

Solo

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Plasma is a fun word.

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The Legend RPG, which I worked on and encourage you to read.

Mixster

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So put them inside the ship. If you're not worried about antimagic, you can use levitate on sections of the ship to make them weightless.

I'm pretty sure aeronautics wont work that way.

Also, if it's an Effigy, awaken contruct will give it sentience.
Monks are pretty much the best designed class ever.

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Benly

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If you want a naturally-buoyant material that's sturdier than soarwood, you could build your ship out of preserved beholder parts. The up side: sturdy, doesn't fall down in antimagic. The down side: gross, and you have to kill a lot of beholders to make a boat.

Bastian

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The Frostfire Engine will propel any vehicle 80ft/round so that can equalize any speed problems you might have (at a very steep price).

Gavinfoxx

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Also, if it's an Effigy, awaken contruct will give it sentience.

Only if it's humanoid, and you expend the brain of a recently dead humanoid. ick!
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The_Mad_Linguist

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Just tons and tons of auto reset magic traps of levitate/suspension, all on tracks, formed into a sphere, aimed towards the outer shell of your soarwood vessel.  Have an AMF embedded in the center.  Move them in and out of the AMF to control direction.  If you want to be fancier, you can double your speed by allowing them to rotate.
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Mixster

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Just tons and tons of auto reset magic traps of levitate/suspension, all on tracks, formed into a sphere, aimed towards the outer shell of your soarwood vessel.  Have an AMF embedded in the center.  Move them in and out of the AMF to control direction.  If you want to be fancier, you can double your speed by allowing them to rotate.
How would you move down with that? Just have the AMF cover everything and fall?
Monks are pretty much the best designed class ever.

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The_Mad_Linguist

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Perfect sphere.  Push the top half into the AMF (or rotate the top ones so they're pointing down.
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CloudkneelA&E: For 200,000gp any vehicle can fly with a minimum speed 40ft per round.
Hilariously Planar Sails which allow you to sail to any plane cost a fraction of the price.
Tiers explained in 8 sentences. With examples!
[spoiler]Tiers break down into who has spellcasting more than anything else due to spells being better than anything else in the game.
6: Skill based. Commoner, Expert, Samurai.
5: Mundane warrior. Barbarian, Fighter, Monk.
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