A large-sized fast-zombie black-dragon can fly 480 miles in one day, without stopping. How would that affect a rider? Say, I'm an elf, and don't need to sleep (can trance while riding). You'd think after a while, the rider would succumb to fatigue, too, right? Any official rulings on this, or even educated opinions?
ell that depends, Elf Trance has been retconed. elves do need to sleep.
480 miles in one day, is that an 8 hour ride or 24 hours?
480 miles flying isn't as nasty as 480 miles bouncing on the back of a horse.
what's 480 miles of driving a car like? Tiresome?
fighter and bomber pilots have routinely flown 12-18 hour sorties. grueling but doable.
Not a walk in the park.
Setting aside the elf legacy thing, if you found a way to not need sleep (Perhaps by being undead yourself?) and an untiring mount then yes, you could just keep going. This isn't the first thread to pose the no-sleep question; the general consensus seems to be that RAW there is nothing in the rules regarding performing any action for longer than a day.
You could possibly adapt the forced march rules from the Overland Movement rules to accommodate a long time in the saddle, but that would still be a houserule.
undead have no con, and therefor have no fatigue, so yes a skeletal champion on a zombie dragon could circumnavigate the planet indefinitely.
this is an amusing thought, maybe something I should describe. "it must be that time of the year again, the zombie dragon just flew over" "Yep, you can tell the seasons by the laps of the zombie dragon" "how old are you, son?" "Many Zombie dragon laps"
And Pathfinder elves don't trance anyway, that's purely a Forgotten Realms thing.
Well, its also a 3.0/3.5 thing. Its in the Player's Handbook. And since I don't remember that specifically being removed, its an Eberron thing as well.
Ah, see. My 3.5 years are showing. I still get confused sometimes. And yeah, it's 24 hours. But this toon (MMO days are showing now, much?) has a CON score, and it's fairly easy to get around sleep. If nothing else, that cheap ring that lets you only sleep two hours makes him be able to fly like, 400 miles a day (4 hours to find a place, sleep, then get going again). I dunno.
Large dragons fly at 200ft/round. 10 rounds per minute, 60 minutes per hour. So 200x10x60=120,000 feet per hour. Divide that by 5280, gives 22.7 miles per hour. 24 hours in a day, so 22.7x24= 544 miles per day.
However, thats not its maximum. Using double moves (hustling) boosts that to 1088 miles per day. Undead dragons are immune to nonlethal damage, so there are no harmful effects from extended hustling.
For that matter, there should be nothing stopping them from "running" all day either. (You can use the run action with any movement modes.) So really, the maximum distance per day for a large undead dragon is 2,176 miles.
Not counting any effects from wind speed and direction.
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However, thats not its maximum. Using double moves (hustling) boosts that to 1088 miles per day. Undead dragons are immune to nonlethal damage, so there are no harmful effects from extended hustling.
PFSRD: "A mount bearing a rider can move at a hustle. The damage it takes when doing so, however, is lethal damage, not nonlethal damage. "
There are rules for Overland Movement. Also,
A mount bearing a rider can move at a hustle. The damage it takes when doing so, however, is lethal damage, not nonlethal damage. The creature can also be ridden in a forced march, but its Constitution checks automatically fail, and the damage it takes is lethal damage. Mounts also become fatigued when they take any damage from hustling or forced marches.
Though I'm pretty certain they never wrote those rules with an undead dragon as a mount in mind.
For that matter, there should be nothing stopping them from "running" all day either. (You can use the run action with any movement modes.)
Actually, running is not permitted in overland travel.
Hustling with a 200-ft fly speed, translates to 40 miles per hour (according to the overland travel table). This totals 960 miles per day.
For that matter, there should be nothing stopping them from "running" all day either. (You can use the run action with any movement modes.)
Actually, running is not permitted in overland travel.
Hustling with a 200-ft fly speed, translates to 40 miles per hour (according to the overland travel table). This totals 960 miles per day.
Running is allowed. Its just that the periods of running and resting needed effectively work out to a hustle. For something that does not get tired, there is no reason to limit how long they can run for at any given time. The rules were written with the vast majority of creatures in mind - one that need to occasionally rest. Something that needs no rest should work differently.
Run: A character can't run for an extended period of time. Attempts to run and rest in cycles effectively work out to a hustle.
There's a first level spell called Keep Watch that lets you act as though you slept for 8 hours while staying awake. So long as you don't do any vigorous activity (like entering combat) while the spell is in effect (doing so breaks the spell), you can effectively stay awake forever. It would probably be useful in this scenario, and I believe you can get it in both scroll and potion forms if you're not capable of learning it yourself.
But does the dragon keep it's fly speed of 200? I thought animated undead were a lot slower than that.
Actually, a zombies speed is totally unaffected. It retains whatever movement types it had in life, at the exact same speed it had in life.
Speed: Winged zombies can still fly, but maneuverability drops to clumsy. If the base creature flew magically, so can the zombie. Retain all other movement types.
However, a normal zombie does gain the Staggered quality, so can only take a single more action or standard action per round. That means it can't double move, or run.
(Fast zombies don't get that quality, and even improve their base land speed by +10 feet/round.)
I got my math from the overland travel section. A speed of 20 means you can go 16 miles in one day. A speed of 200 ft would mean you multiply 16 by ten, 160. But that's only 8 hours. Multiply 160 by 3, and that's how far you can go in 24 hours. If the mount were double moving or even running, I'd definitely start making the rider take damage or status effects. Holding on to something that's flying 40 miles an hour, especially 80...that's gotta be fairly strenuous if done for a long time. Haha, I should make a gargantuan undead mount, put a little cabin on top; then it's just a pleasurable airship ride :)
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Ah, clumsy and staggered, that must be what I was trying to remember.
Anyway, this is cute, but I don't think it'll be a very smooth ride - you're basically in an airplane without any cabin around you; wind in your hair, howling. And you're not flying evenly; there's clumsy undead wingbeats. This might actually be worse than riding a horse.
Of course, if you yourself are undead, who cares? It's fine for LichAir...