Transporting small armies without any planar magic


Advice


Is there a way for a high level caster of any class to transport a few hundred troops without using any spells that touch the planes such as Teleportation (uses the Astral) Gate, etc?


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Sure. Charter a ship.

Oh, you meant with magic?

It depends on a few variables. How high level, how much money they have to burn, how fast they need to move and how ethical the caster is.

For example, using zombie dragons using nets to haul the troops en masse (like Temeraire with undead), do they have dragon corpses available, do they have a high enough caster level to command them all, do they have flexible enough ethics to do so? Using simulacra dragons likewise, do they want to spend all that money on simulacra, and of course they need to be high enough level to cast it. Using Wind Walk will only shift a handful of people at a time, but it does move those people very fast; if they have a safe rendezvous it should work well. Transport via Plants works similarly. Wands of phantom chariot would be fantastically expensive but does the job, without a single point of failure.


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I was looking at this for my own purposes. The Lord's Banner of Swiftness lets everyone within a mile march tirelessly. There's not many other effects to move an army faster.

A wand of phantom chariot is only 26 thousand or so. If you want the chariots to air walk, it would be 36,000, but the chariots could move 300 troops 200 miles in 9 hours.


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Using animate object on small boats, or even buildings and then permanencying the effect gets you a reasonably fast moving flying transport scheme.
Alternately, charm monster/dominate monster a sufficient number of Rocs and/or Thunderbirds. A druid with call animal may be extremely useful in finding enough of these usually solitary apex predators.

If you're looking for subtlety, cast invisibility sphere and possibly silence on your method of conveyance. Standard invisibility would also work, but would leave the troops themselves visible.

Good luck!


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

This ought to do it.


Ravingdork wrote:
This ought to do it.

Pretty crappy castle if it only takes up 30 ft. space.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

That's just it's "combat space." It is likely much larger (I just wrote in the general size of most colossal creatures).

Think of it like that little tapered tail end dragging along the ground crushing everything in its path.


Ravingdork wrote:
That's just it's "combat space." It is likely much larger (I just wrote in the general size of most colossal creatures).

This is the issue with the colossal size category... Suddenly the giant object/creature shrinks down into a tiny space just because someone rolled initative.

Shadow Lodge

Milo v3 wrote:
Ravingdork wrote:
That's just it's "combat space." It is likely much larger (I just wrote in the general size of most colossal creatures).
This is the issue with the colossal size category... Suddenly the giant object/creature shrinks down into a tiny space just because someone rolled initative.

It's one of the problems caused by over-codification.


Kthulhu wrote:
Milo v3 wrote:
Ravingdork wrote:
That's just it's "combat space." It is likely much larger (I just wrote in the general size of most colossal creatures).
This is the issue with the colossal size category... Suddenly the giant object/creature shrinks down into a tiny space just because someone rolled initative.
It's one of the problems caused by over-codification.

Do other GMs actually treat colossal creatures as taking up a maximum of 30 by 30? I just treat it the lower limit for things having colossal bonuses/penalties. The rule is a poor joke.


No with something like the castle above I'd probably consider that to be some portion of the castle, maybe even just treat it as an actual building and assign damage to portions of it. But no the castle (or other 'super' colossal creature) is in no way is going to squeeze down to a 30 by 30 cube for most purposes.


Well, there are creatures of the colossal size category in bestiary's that have space larger than 30 ft., like Cthulhu and the kaiju.


Son you need some skalds. No lords banners. Just sing and walk.

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