One of my players bought boots of levitation recently and a question has come up.
Do they simply move you up and down or do they negate gravity with a range of personal?
I know nothing in the spell says anything about negating weight/gravity, but the part about you becoming unbalanced when trying to wield a weapon seems to imply it.
This is important to discern what can be used to move a levitating character from A to B. If he simply is moved up into the air and nothing else, he/she needs to grab onto some handholds to move.
If the character becomes essentially weightless, a simple gust of wind or unseen servant would be enough.
You could even use mage hand by poking the character with an unattended object, which the becomes attended by touching him (at least thats how I understand the RAW), falls down, becomes unattended, repeat for profit.
Or if the character is weightless, you could tie twine to an arrow, shoot it to the other side of the chasm and clamber along it.
I just want to know what to allow once my players start pondering the full potential of their new toy, which they are sooner or later bound to do.
A levitating character still has mass.
The SPELL levitate says "You cannot move the recipient horizontally, but the recipient could clamber along the face of a cliff, for example, or push against a ceiling to move laterally (generally at half its base land speed)." This sets the precident that a levitator CAN move horizontally.
As long as you limit speed as above, the boots user could move himself along a horizontal string. An unseen servant can't fly, so if the boots user was levitating higher than it can reach, that wouldn't work. A wind spell would likely move him as well, perhaps more easily than if he was standing on the ground.
My thoughts go into directions like "big chasm outside, no ceiling to clamber along, no tree on the other side to shoot a rope-arrow into". Would that still be an obstacle or not?
That would still be an obstacle, since the character would need help to move forward/backward; the boots only grant up/down movement. As mentioned above, handholds, ropes, and the like would work. Wind wouldn't be sufficient unless it was strong.
For full movement in all directions, the character would need to get his hands on a pair of Winged Boots.
could someone use the counter-pressure from a decanter of endless water for a messy flight spell with lousy maneuverability?