js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag) (05/15/85)
A situation came up recently in a campaign I run in which seems to be
common enough to warrant discussion in this forum. Our party needed to travel
a very long distance, and as we had accumulated enough magic and abilities
to airlift the entire party in various ways, we decided to save time by
traveling by air. As I recall, we had two members on a carpet of flying,
one member being towed behind them with a rope and a ring of levitation, two
members with the druidical form changing abilities, and two members riding
two hippogriffs.
Our speed was limited at by the two members on the hippogriffs, as the DM
ruled that they could not maintain their full flying speed while carrying
people. Fair enough, but we wanted to go faster.
I decided to have my druid character use a Control Winds spell to give us
a 30 mph tail wind. Working through the conversions, I found that 30 mph
works out to be 68"/rnd; adding in our flying speed, we should have been
moving at around 90"/rnd, about 5 times the speed we could have gone on
horseback. Unfortunately, the DM ruled that wind speed and flying speeds are
not additive. I guess there may be some justification for this in the case
of the carpet, since it doesn't use aerodynamics to fly.
Our DM said that we could only go at 30"/rnd, not much faster than we
had been going before the tail wind. (Don't ask me why.) The effect, however,
was that we ended up flying 38"/rnd *slower* than the wind!
It wasn't a total loss, however, as I was able to use the winds to
*seriously* screw up a red dragon, so that we were able to take him out in
the air without being toasted. Know what happens to a dragon
when the wind suddenly changes so that his airspeed is less than zero?
(Don't ask why the DM ruled reasonably on this when he already had *us*
flying slower than the wind.)
How do other DM's treat flying with a tail wind? Are carpets of flying
affected by tail winds? And do you allow carpets to tow levitating people?
And what is the average flying speed of a laden hippogriff? <English or
African? ... Aaaaah!>
--
Jeff Sonntag
ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j
"Time has passed, and now it seems that everybody's having those dreams.
Everybody sees himself walking around with no one else." - Dylanmccolm@ucla-cs.UUCP (05/22/85)
(This line has come face-to-face with the Universal Oneness. Urk!) ...there's something here about two people on a flying carpet... >one member being towed behind them with a rope and a ring of levitation, two >members with the druidical form changing abilities, and two members riding >two hippogriffs. Sounds like a moving tourist attraction. > I decided to have my druid character use a Control Winds spell to give us >a 30 mph tail wind. Working through the conversions, I found that 30 mph >works out to be 68"/rnd; adding in our flying speed, we should have been >moving at around 90"/rnd, about 5 times the speed we could have gone on >horseback. Unfortunately, the DM ruled that wind speed and flying speeds are >not additive. I guess there may be some justification for this in the case >of the carpet, since it doesn't use aerodynamics to fly. What? 68"/rnd (outdoors) = 3*680 ft/min = 34 ft/sec = 21 mph (about). Remember, 2mph = 3'/sec, or very close. So human running speed is about 9'/sec (in armor), or 180 yds/min, or 18"/rnd (outdoors). 180"/turn? Yep. Keep in mind that movement speeds in AD&D are at *mapping* speed, which is a very inventive way to express movement rates for animal-intelligence monsters. <insert deranged-looking face here> A flying object, like an animal, has a groundspeed G=A+nW, where A=airspeed, W=wind velocity, and 0<=n<=1 is the efficiency of the object in using the wind to accentuate velocity (or avoid wind effects; W can be negative). For magic objects, a warning: if you decide magic carpets are unaffected by wind (n=0), watch out, because they'll fly into the teeth of a gale at full speed. This is, of course, a simplification, but it's fast and easy, except for when you try to deal with crosswinds. (Can you say Trigonometry? Good.) Levitating people are effectively weightless, but not massless, and they still have wind resistance. So they'll slow you down if you tow them. And in a force 14 gale, they'd better have heard of New England Life... >And what is the average flying speed of a laden hippogriff? <English or >African? ... Aaaaah!> Depends. Where's the nearest candy shop? (Creepin' Chocoholics, Batman!) >Jeff Sonntag >ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j --fini-- Eric McColm UCLA (oo' - kluh) Funny Farm for the Criminally Harmless UUCP: ...!{ihnp4,trwspp,cepu,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!mccolm ARPA: (still) mccolm@UCLA-CS.ARPA (someday) mccolm@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU Q1: "The world is round. With all else, it's up to us." Q2: "Reason is Peace; Fanaticism is Slavery; Tolerance is Strength."