Jamieface |
Hello, nice people here.
Is it somehow possible to make an entire city hover? Don't want to say fly, since it'll be stationary, but to basically be up in the air. A great example of something like this would be Idylla from Kingdoms of Amalur. Link: http://amalur.wikia.com/wiki/Idylla
I'm running a really high level campaign that's based around very strong creatures (not even all of them humanoid!) controlling different kingdoms that they get to rule and tailor to their own devices, but there's popped up questions about if something like this could be possible. I don't really like mixing in a whole lot of house rules, so wondering if there's a non-house ruled way to do it.
Eltacolibre |
In a world of high level/magic campaign? So many different ways to do it. Maybe they have wizards scrying the kingdom and teleporting scout/battalions to the floating kingdom borders/edges. Maybe they use exotic mounts like Hippogriffs, Wyverns etc...
That's without counting even more exotic kingdoms or creatures, like dragons who might not enjoy a kingdom in the sky or maybe squad of Mercenary Effreetis paid to deal with them.
wraithstrike |
wraithstrike wrote:If they are getting a free city, I don't think making it fly is going to matter that much unless the other players had something equal to it before it could fly.I don't really understand what you mean.
From the way I read your post someone is getting a free city. Now I realize the word "free" was not used so my point may not stand, but basically if a player is getting a city getting him to let it fly is not something most other players care about unless one player is getting all of the cool "toys".
As for making the city fly, many settings have flying cities. Maybe the players can try to figure out how to make it happen by doing research or going on a side quest.
However there are no rules written in PF. Such things are normally GM Fiat because players don't normally get cities or kingdoms to rule.
Splendor |
A single colossal permanent animated flying quadruped object equipped with muleback cords and a permanent ant haul spell would have a light carrying capacity of 1,073,644lbs. Houses now-a-days weight between 80,000lbs - 160,000lbs. So for each 7 house you would need one of these.
Under the construct type it gets "Skill points equal to 2 + Int modifier (minimum 1) per Hit" so it should have 13 skill points (put 12 in FLy and one in acrobatics).
It doesn't say if they get feats or not, but if they do take Skill Focus Fly, Cut Your Losses, Hover and any other feats to increase their fly skill.
'Cut your losses' increase your STR for the purpose of carrying capacity by 2. Which would not be 1,410,048 or 9 houses.
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Instead of the constructs holding up the city. Have them hold up a large flat floor. That floor would be covered in reverse gravity traps that the entire city floats on.
LazarX |
One of the issues of the Mummy's Mask adventure path (five I think) deals with the Shory, a civilization that had floating cities. Might have something there about how they did it.
Default would be GM fiat.
That's the best way to handle a flying city, essentially as a huge one-off artifact, not something to be mass produced by standard magic item creation rules.
WatersLethe |
As for DM fiat, I personally like the concept of finding and mining rare stones that are naturally imbued with an anti-gravity effect. This gives the possibility of "cheaply" making a flying city if someone happened to come across a large deposit and mine it out. If people want to do the same they have to spend more money to track down far flung, smaller deposits but it is technically possible for players to achieve.
But I feel like there should be a way to do this within the rules. I think Splendor's idea is in the right spirit. Anyone else have an idea?
How about immovable rods? Bound elementals? Extremely optimized levitation casting? Some demi-plane shenanigans?
LazarX |
As for DM fiat, I personally like the concept of finding and mining rare stones that are naturally imbued with an anti-gravity effect. This gives the possibility of "cheaply" making a flying city if someone happened to come across a large deposit and mine it out. If people want to do the same they have to spend more money to track down far flung, smaller deposits but it is technically possible for players to achieve.
But I feel like there should be a way to do this within the rules. I think Splendor's idea is in the right spirit. Anyone else have an idea?
How about immovable rods? Bound elementals? Extremely optimized levitation casting? Some demi-plane shenanigans?
The rules have a massive breakdown when it comes to really big things. And when you're talking city scale or larger, YOU'RE THINKING REALLY BIG.
Jamieface |
Yay to see so much enthusiasm for helping me!
I looked into making nodes with Reverse Gravity on them, basically using them as foundation for the city, but each node would cost 1.12 million gold to make, because it's a continuous effect.
Also looked into the demiplane idea to see how much it would cost to create a city distract when using Greater Demiplane. Result was 57 million gold, and then it'd only be ten feet high. Multiply that each time you want to add ten more feet >_<
Splendor, where are the rules for making constructs like that? I'm not really sure where to look, since I've never really fiddled with constructs before :x
WatersLethe |
I feel like Gravity Elementals should be able to do this, but it seems like they're actually pretty limited. Their ability to "make all the creatures in its area too heavy to move" seems like, if reversed, could amount to a hell of a lot of total, upward force.
WatersLethe |
Silver Dragons can Cloud Walk at will, Cloud Giants are rumored to have cities that are nestled in the clouds, and Slippers of Cloud Walking have no weight limit. Just to get some ideas going.
Edit: Also, the Plane of Air has magically solidified clouds and floating cities. Can they be brought over?
LazarX |
Other ways to justify floating city:
- Wish
- Miracle
- Reverse Gravity
- Floating Disk
- Telekinesis
None of those spells are powerful enough to lift a floating city, because you're talking epic level magic. Not even mythic will do it by itself.
Mark Hoover |
Mark Hoover wrote:None of those spells are powerful enough to lift a floating city, because you're talking epic level magic. Not even mythic will do it by itself.Other ways to justify floating city:
- Wish
- Miracle
- Reverse Gravity
- Floating Disk
- Telekinesis
You're right. However if someone is looking for a basic mechanic for HOW it is floating, all of these are viable. Remove level limits and just look at how the spells work.
chbgraphicarts |
Cloud Castle of the Storm King
Oh, hey, lookit that - it's a castle that floats!
"How's it do that?"
Magic
"But - "
MAGIC, DO YOU HEAR ME!? MAGIC AND THE KISSES OF A THOUSAND PUPPIES!
...
Seriously, it's such a common trope I don't think you need to spend endless hours trying to justify it: Laputa in Gulliver's Travels used "magnetic levitation"; Laputa in Castle in the Sky was made of gigantic Lapis Lazuli crystals which contained magic that kept the city afloat; Aeolia floated in The Odyssey because... it's Greek Mythology - some god probably did it.
I mean, "One day, a god got really drunk and decided 'Hey! This should be up here!'" is as legitimate an answer as anything else. "The cause of its nature is lost to the far-flung past" is another, and a polite way of saying "it just does, not hush-up and keep playing".
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If you ARE desperate for a logical explanation, feel free to use this:
Wondrous Item:
Clocharsnamh
Aura - moderate Transumation
CL - 3rd
Price - 24,000gp
Description: This small, marbled stone of rich blues & golds, never touches the ground. It floats, as under a persistent Levitate spell. Placing the stone within a fitting for an amulet grants this levitating quality to the wearer. Any creature wearing a Clocharsnamh will be subject to a Levitate spell as cast by a 3rd Level Wizard (the spell can support and levitate up to 300lbs)
Construction Requirements: Craft Wondrous Items, Levitate, 1 stone of very fine Lapis Lazuli worth 15gp.
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Have the base of the City be filled with these; maybe a crafter god went mad one day and decided to make millions of these stones, and then place them within the earth, causing the island to fly...
90% of any problems like this can be solved with fluff, especially since you're the DM.
Tiny Coffee Golem |
a character with 8th mythic levels and access to the Mythic Levitate spell can do it.
Unless there's a clever short cut I'm unaware of it would take a long time to levitate an entire city. However if it's being handed to the PC'c it's a non issue. If the PC's weren't the ones to create the floating blocks it would make sense that they couldn't move them.
FYI: Being able to do this in game is a dream of mine.
LEVITATE
Source levitate
Instead of affecting one creature, you can affect a number of targets up to your caster level, but the total weight supported can be no more than 100 pounds per caster level. You can spend a move action to mentally direct all targets, but you must move all of them identically.
Augmented (8th): If you expend 10 uses of mythic power, you permanently levitate a 5-foot cube of rock, which you can move 20 feet vertically or horizontally as a move action.
If you have created multiple cubes and they are physically touching each other, you can direct them all as a single move action (as if they were one object), even if some of them are out of range. Each levitating cube can support approximately 1,000 pounds of weight, allowing you to use it as a portion of the foundation for a bridge, floating castle, or similar construction project.
Edit: Also, theoretically this costs nothing but time. If theres a way to renew mythic points faster then the time is shortened.
LazarX |
Also magnetism. Really though; don't overthink this. Hand the player the city and tell them it floats. If they need to fly it somewhere just narrate it.
It is worth keeping in mind that walking around a magnetic field that powerful, would be akin to strolling in a megawatt microwave oven.
That's the big reason the floating mountains in Avatar don't work as a sci-fi concept, and should have stayed in Frazetta paintings where they belong.
Sauce987654321 |
Mark Hoover wrote:None of those spells are powerful enough to lift a floating city, because you're talking epic level magic. Not even mythic will do it by itself.Other ways to justify floating city:
- Wish
- Miracle
- Reverse Gravity
- Floating Disk
- Telekinesis
why isn't wish powerful enough? It states that you can request more powerful effects, but it would still be up to the GM.
Sauce987654321 |
A single colossal permanent animated flying quadruped object equipped with muleback cords and a permanent ant haul spell would have a light carrying capacity of 1,073,644lbs. Houses now-a-days weight between 80,000lbs - 160,000lbs. So for each 7 house you would need one of these.
Under the construct type it gets "Skill points equal to 2 + Int modifier (minimum 1) per Hit" so it should have 13 skill points (put 12 in FLy and one in acrobatics).
It doesn't say if they get feats or not, but if they do take Skill Focus Fly, Cut Your Losses, Hover and any other feats to increase their fly skill.
'Cut your losses' increase your STR for the purpose of carrying capacity by 2. Which would not be 1,410,048 or 9 houses.
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Instead of the constructs holding up the city. Have them hold up a large flat floor. That floor would be covered in reverse gravity traps that the entire city floats on.
now add 10 mythic ranks, get display of strength and mules strength 14 times to get a +90 bonus to carrying capacity. Now you're looking at a light load of 140,724,666 tons.
LazarX |
LazarX wrote:why isn't wish powerful enough? It states that you can request more powerful effects, but it would still be up to the GM.Mark Hoover wrote:None of those spells are powerful enough to lift a floating city, because you're talking epic level magic. Not even mythic will do it by itself.Other ways to justify floating city:
- Wish
- Miracle
- Reverse Gravity
- Floating Disk
- Telekinesis
Wish is not a spell of infinite power. It's a 9th level spell, no more, no less. More powerful wishes come from more powerful sources.
Sauce987654321 |
Sauce987654321 wrote:Wish is not a spell of infinite power. It's a 9th level spell, no more, no less. More powerful wishes come from more powerful sources.LazarX wrote:why isn't wish powerful enough? It states that you can request more powerful effects, but it would still be up to the GM.Mark Hoover wrote:None of those spells are powerful enough to lift a floating city, because you're talking epic level magic. Not even mythic will do it by itself.Other ways to justify floating city:
- Wish
- Miracle
- Reverse Gravity
- Floating Disk
- Telekinesis
we're talking about making a city float, that doesn't require infinite power. The spell says you can try to create more powerful effects, while doing so is dangerous, and mentions nothing about more powerful sources.
LazarX |
LazarX wrote:we're talking about making a city float, that doesn't require infinite power. The spell says you can try to create more powerful effects, while doing so is dangerous, and mentions nothing about more powerful sources.Sauce987654321 wrote:Wish is not a spell of infinite power. It's a 9th level spell, no more, no less. More powerful wishes come from more powerful sources.LazarX wrote:why isn't wish powerful enough? It states that you can request more powerful effects, but it would still be up to the GM.Mark Hoover wrote:None of those spells are powerful enough to lift a floating city, because you're talking epic level magic. Not even mythic will do it by itself.Other ways to justify floating city:
- Wish
- Miracle
- Reverse Gravity
- Floating Disk
- Telekinesis
How about this. it's trite, unpoetic, and too damm easy? It's also what I call, a cop-out answer.
"I Wish for a Floating City!"
"...uh..... okay."
dragonhunterq |
2e had 10th level spells, one of those was 'proctivs move mountain' or some such that chopped the top off of a mountain flipped it over and levitated it. Updated in 3e to Epic level spells. Nowadays I'm thinking you'd need a custom mythic 9th level spell to do it in one hit.
But yeah! "because magic and I'm the GM and I say it floats, alright" is easiest.
But then I'm guilty of including tons of special effects that can't be duplicated by players, so I may be biased.
Faelyn |
If I recall correctly, the 3.X Epic Level Handbook had an epic level spell which could cut off a portion of a mountain, flip it over, and then keep it "afloat". I cannot recall the name of the spell currently, but I'll see if I can find the spell for you. One easy way to go, though perhaps not exactly PF compatible.
KestrelZ |
For the Golarion setting, floating cities are powered by Shory artifacts (or some equivalent artifact). They exist, yet tend to be beyond a PC's understanding without a lot of assistance or experimenting with a working Shory artifact.
It's best handled as a setting artifact rather than something that can be done with a handful of spells. Something on the order of building a unique construct, and is up to the GM.
waterwashesstuff |
Simple solution:
Why does the city on the whole have to be affected by one/multiple spells when each brick/section could be permanently levitated?
High level casters (the kind that can cast permanency and levitation) could simply hold the city up in one-ton sections, add potential metamagic effects and it could be done.
In my game, i'd make it highly illegal to cast mass dispel type magics within... err... upon the city limits, as occasionally a spell goes awry and half a city block plummets to the ground below.
This would also allow the city to be modular, with pieces nudged and re-arranged. If the city was attacked in force, it could break down into smaller pieces and break off from the main.
Sorry, getting carried away.
TLDR version: Lots of Levitation spells
Splendor |
As for reverse gravity it affects and area of "up to one 10-ft. cube/level (S)". If you fudged the (S) to allow a dimension smaller than 10', say like 1" then you could cover the area between the constructs and the city. 3280*3280*.083=892947 cubic feet. The spell affects 1500 cubic feet at its min caster level (one 10' cube per level). 892947/1500 = 596 so it would take 596 enchantments to effectively negate the weight.
A Magical Trap costs "500 gp × caster level × spell level". 500*15*8= 60,000gp. 60,000*600= 36,000,000gp
A weightless enchantment that covers a square mile for 36 million gold.
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A 1" thick hardwood wood base that is 1 mile x 1 miles is a 892,947 cubic feet and weighs 71,435,760lbs. I've never used the mythic system so you may be able to make a stronger construct then what I came up with.
1,410,048lbs was the amount my constructs could fly with, so you would need 51 of them to lift the mile wide platform.
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A 20th level caster hardening the entire wood base is effectively free, but takes 4464 castings and its new hardness would be 15.
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Construct Price:cost of object + [(animated object’s HD + CP) × 1,000])
Additional Movement (Ex, 1 CP): Gains a new mode of movement - fly [clumsy]
13HD*1CP*1000gp=13,000gp.
13,000*51=663,000gp
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Golems fly speed would be 30(clumsy). So its total FLY skill check would be 12 ranks, +3 class skill, -2 dex, -8 size, -8 clumsy, +6 skill focus fest, +4 acrobatic feat = +7 on FLY checks.
But with the Hover feat allows it to hover without making a fly check>
As for their appearance, think narrow and wide like UFO's with 4 little legs (they don't need wings to fly, its magic. But they need the 4 little legs to be quadrupeds). Each holding up a section of the city.
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36,000,000gp for reverse gravity
663,000gp for the golems
52,000 gp for Muleback Cords (+8 STR for carrying capacity)
104,000 gp for Heavyload Belts (Ant haul)
36,819,000 total for magical means of flying that much weight.
Extra 1)If you wanted the constructs to be stone it would cost an additional 663,0000gp.
Extra 2)If you wanted to add +5 to each constructs fly skill it would cost 127,500gp (giving them a +12 on fly checks)
Faelyn |
I apologize the spell is actually in the Player's Guide to Faerun, not the Epic Level Handbook, but it is an epic level spell with a very high Spellcraft DC (based on the weird epic level spellcasting rules), but something to think upon.
Proctiv’s Move Mountain: You shear off the top of a mountain, levitate it into the air, and invert it, creating a floating mass of earth with a smooth surface suitable for construction. The ancient archwizards of Netheril used this spell to create their famous floating enclaves. You control the movement, both vertical and horizontal, of the floating mountain.
There's further detail of the spell, but not sure if it would be violating any policies by providing the rest of the spell from the book.