I was going to say you could use it to quickly raise an ally very high, but then realized that Spider Climb was second level.
It does render yourself or an ally completely inaccessible to many enemies for a full 5 minutes, which is a long time in combat.
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I meam, if you don't think being in the air is valuable, nothing we can tell you will change that.
Imo it has its place, fly is better but levitate is 2 levels earlier and well... uses lower level slots.
It also doesn't require actions to stay in the air iirc.
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While fighting hard to see enemy skirmishers in a field of tall grass, our bard tied a leash on the ranger (an archer), then cast levitate on him so he bobbed upwards above the grass like a balloon. From up there he could not only harry the enemies hiding in the field, he could point out their movements and positions to the rest of the party as well. Meanwhile, the party monk would hold the other end of the line and drag his "balloon turret" wherever it needed to go at high speeds.
It turned a difficult encounter into a massacre.
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question could you conjure a unseen servant hold his hand and tell him to move?
i mean he can't carry you but you already weightless with levitate so he could pull you
Persuade an enemy to stand under a floating boulder and wait for the duration to run out?
Here's the biggest advantage of Levitate over Fly. With Levitate, you can eat the -2 attack penalty and have all your actions available to you. Which means that Spellcasters throwing aoe or saving throw spells won't have an issue. Fly doesn't have that option at all. You need to spend one action to hover if you didn't spend any actions moving in the round.
That's a good advantage that can be used even for Attack-Based Ranged combatants. A -2 is tough, yes, but with penalties flying around, it isn't so terrible, when certain enemies won't reach you at all.
The weight limit seems weird, though. Because you could levitate a giant rock or stone slab and create an elevator for the whole party. The biggest hurdle of the spell is the amount of actions that need to be used to reach a safe height.
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Could you use levitate and fly in conjunction to avoid eating the attack penalty and the action expenditure?
Could you use levitate and fly in conjunction to avoid eating the attack penalty and the action expenditure?
I don't see how that argument could be made.
Could you use levitate and fly in conjunction to avoid eating the attack penalty and the action expenditure?
I think it would veer into exploit territory because the game doesn't give us it's internal mechanics, so you're overlapping two effects that could mechanically be exploited, but I think in the game world they would either conflict or Fly would simply an evolution to Levitate.
Unless I'm missing some trait interactions, I think you could use both to exploit the system mechanics, but it would veer too much into metagaming for me, personally.
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Could you use levitate and fly in conjunction to avoid eating the attack penalty and the action expenditure?I think it would veer into exploit territory because the game doesn't give us it's internal mechanics, so you're overlapping two effects that could mechanically be exploited, but I think in the game world they would either conflict or Fly would simply an evolution to Levitate.
Unless I'm missing some trait interactions, I think you could use both to exploit the system mechanics, but it would veer too much into metagaming for me, personally.
i don't think its a exploit its more like a combo as for the benefit the players is paying 2 slots to get it so he isn't getting it for free
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While fighting hard to see enemy skirmishers in a field of tall grass, our bard tied a leash on the ranger (an archer), then cast levitate on him so he bobbed upwards above the grass like a balloon. From up there he could not only harry the enemies hiding in the field, he could point out their movements and positions to the rest of the party as well. Meanwhile, the party monk would hold the other end of the line and drag his "balloon turret" wherever it needed to go at high speeds.
It turned a difficult encounter into a massacre.
I love this,it makes sense, but is it supported by the rules?
The culture of this edition especially seems against anything not directly supported by the rules, and allowing this opens up a huge can of worms.
An unseen servant, animal companion, or even a familiar might be able to do this.
If you can be towed, can you pull yourself along?
Can you toss an anchor or throw a harpoon and use to pull yourself?
Could you levitate a tree trunk, then have your while team climb on?
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The culture of this edition especially seems against anything not directly supported by the rules, and allowing this opens up a huge can of worms.
An unseen servant, animal companion, or even a familiar might be able to do this.
If you can be towed, can you pull yourself along?
Can you toss an anchor or throw a harpoon and use to pull yourself?
Could you levitate a tree trunk, then have your while team climb on?
that reminds me of a certain gm that whenever he had enemies hidden in flammable places and i said "spark" he would say "yeah the straw house is a little bit moist so it doesn't catch on fire" and i'm like "sigh dude you know if i knew you were gonna act like that i would have picked burning hands"
i call that making up rules and if its culture then its bad culture
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While fighting hard to see enemy skirmishers in a field of tall grass, our bard tied a leash on the ranger (an archer), then cast levitate on him so he bobbed upwards above the grass like a balloon. From up there he could not only harry the enemies hiding in the field, he could point out their movements and positions to the rest of the party as well. Meanwhile, the party monk would hold the other end of the line and drag his "balloon turret" wherever it needed to go at high speeds.
It turned a difficult encounter into a massacre.
I love this,it makes sense, but is it supported by the rules?
The culture of this edition especially seems against anything not directly supported by the rules, and allowing this opens up a huge can of worms.
An unseen servant, animal companion, or even a familiar might be able to do this.
If you can be towed, can you pull yourself along?
Can you toss an anchor or throw a harpoon and use to pull yourself?
You can certainly pull yourself along; that's in the spell description.
If the target is adjacent to a fixed object or terrain of suitable stability, it can move across the surface by climbing (if the surface is vertical, like a wall) or crawling (if the surface is horizontal, such as a ceiling). The GM determines which surfaces can be climbed or crawled across.
The fact that you can pull yourself along by climbing/crawling implies, to me, that you can be pulled by someone else.
Could you levitate a tree trunk, then have your while team climb on?
Here I admit things get tricky. Once people climb on it, is it still unattended? If not, it ceases to be a valid target for the spell and falls.
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why does it make you happy if players spend 4 spell slots on levitation instead of 1 in a log
besides if they cast on a log or so someone could just destroy the log and make them fall
if a player makes a log levitate and them uses a lot of unseen servants to pull it then he is still using resources its not a cantrip
i will never understand that mindset
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If standing on a thing makes it attended and makes it drop instantly, that has applications.
Could you use levitate and fly in conjunction to avoid eating the attack penalty and the action expenditure?
Thinking it through, no.
If you're flying, you need to spend an action flying, leaving two actions and no penalty.
If you don't spend that action flying, you levitate, and you eat the -2
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If standing on a thing makes it attended and makes it drop instantly, that has applications.
Yes it does: levitate that log/boulder, ect and then have your flying familiar land on it. Log/boulder then falls on enemy while familiar uses second move action to fly away...
why does it make you happy if players spend 4 spell slots on levitation instead of 1 in a log
besides if they cast on a log or so someone could just destroy the log and make them fall
if a player makes a log levitate and them uses a lot of unseen servants to pull it then he is still using resources its not a cantrip
i will never understand that mindset
Happy? I'm not sure how you got how he felt off of the post. Giving an impression of the way a rule reads doesn't mean that's what they WANT it to be. It has pros and cons so I'm not sure why this is 'bad'.
Could you use levitate and fly in conjunction to avoid eating the attack penalty and the action expenditure?Thinking it through, no.
If you're flying, you need to spend an action flying, leaving two actions and no penalty.
If you don't spend that action flying, you levitate, and you eat the -2
So...worst case scenario, I can fly about, then hover with no additional action cost, then can cast a spell that lacks attack rolls at no penalty?
That's not so bad.
It seems a fairly big expenditure of the party’s spell energy, all to avoid the -2 penalty. Doesn’t seem metagamey to me, more like dedicated investment.
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Just for completeness, Air Walk should also be considered. It is the same level as Fly, and does not require hover at all.
Just for completeness, Air Walk should also be considered. It is the same level as Fly, and does not require hover at all.
Air walk doesn't work well if you're a divine caster (which doesn't have fly) or if you're an arcane or occult caster (which don't have air walk).
If you're arcane/occult, you're pretty much stuck with fly and levitate. Only the primal list gets the best of both, getting access to both air walk and fly.