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[Yoink]

Melbourne folks!
I'm a bit late with this - I should have posted earlier but it didn't occur to me 'til now - but tomorrow, Good Games Melbourne, a gaming store in the CBD, is having their Free RPG Day. I went last year and it was pretty sweet!
Unfortunately I won't be able to make it this time, but if you're interested it shouldn't be too late to grab one of the last seats at a table. There are a few spots left in D&D, Legend of the Five Rings and a Conan RPG. Unfortunately Call of Cthulhu is full, otherwise I might have had to expend the immense effort to shuffle my schedule in order to attend, haha...

I definitely recommend it to anyone with even a faint interest in tabletop RPGs. Last time was definitely a positive experience - even if it didn't end up getting me to start being more involved in gaming like I'd hoped. ^_^;
Also they give out free goodies to participants!
I wish I'd known about it earlier, but somehow I only found out it was on a couple of days ago. Alas.


Edit: oops, accidentally hit submit too soon.

[wierd]

So.

The D20 wiki for the mage hand says it cannot activate magical items.  I presume this is for things that require some kind of active magical channeling, rather than, you know "Push a button".

I say that, because an immovable rod is a magical item, that is activated by -- you guessed it-- PUSHING A BUTTON.


Now:

The Mage Hand can only carry 10 lbs, and can only move 30 feet away from its user before being dispelled. 
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Mage%20Hand#content

An immovable rod weighs just a few pounds, and is activated by depressing the button socketed into the end of it.
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Immovable%20Rod#content


Clever use of a good length of rope, mage hands, and immovable rods, could be used to make a "very sluggish" "Magic carpet".

Imagine:

The rope is tied to the immovable rods using timber hitch knots.
https://www.netknots.com/rope_knots/timber-hitch

Between the rods, the rope is woven into something resembling a cargo net.

Riders sit in the netting.

At any given point, the weight of the riders is sustained by the immovable rods, NOT the mage hands.  The apparatus moves "sluglike", in that it incrementally moves each rod forward slightly by deactivating it, tugging on the netting so that it moves forward/upward/whatever, then activating it again, in a rhythmic, repetitious pattern.

Since each rod can carry up to 8000lbs of dead weight, having such a contraption made from several rods, an entire party, and their loot, could be "slugged" along, even over a very large expansive crevasse.  That you can move a mage hand up to 30ft at a whack, even with its 10lb restriction (as long as the weight of the netting itself tied to it does not exceed 8lbs) the combined weight of the net and rod at each moment of movement will be within its limitations, and cloud potentially move quite quickly.

Being a net, the party could look down through it, and even shoot arrows down through it, without much issue.  Being sufficiently high up (such as in open terrain), would make them vulnerable only to flyers and mage fire. (and if they are using fire proof rope, and have suitable tower shields to sit on, even that might not be a problem.)



Sorry, I imagine silly things like this when I read about nonsense items like these.

[Grim Portent]

Restrictions like Mage Hand and Magic Items are generally restrictive, as are D&D rules in general  , so it technically shouldn't be able to work an immovable rod despite how little sense it makes that it can't.

That said there are plenty of spells to make small assistants or invisible forces to do tasks for you, so you can Mage Hand the slug-rug to move and have the rods activated/deactivated by homonculi, or familiars or unseen servants. I think US can activate items for you anyway. Makes it more awkward, but it should work out about as fast.

It'll be very slow anyway since it only moves as fast as there are mage hands to shuffle it along

[Persus13]

And pressing the button requires an action as well.

[wierd]

This kind of thing would be "Unrealistic as all hell" to try to simulate in a battle. 

Rather, it is for when the DM goes "The tunnel you have been following lets out into a massive underground grotto. The stone path abruptly ends where once a stone bridge had been constructed. An ancient cave-in has collapsed the bridge, and now the path terminates at an abrupt precipice, going 500 feet straight down.  In the gloom of the cavern, you cannot even make out the bottom."

Just after you collected several hundred pounds worth of really kick assed swag, but triggered the trap that shuts the main entrance you came in through down.


You can go "CRAZY DWARF TRICK BEEOTCH!" and blow several hours time to get all your shit over the precipice without any hitches, and sidestep whatever horrors the DM had INTENDED for you to encounter in trying to climb down the side of the wall (while carrying enough gold to mash you flat!), and then try to find a way back up again after trying to navigate the hazards on the cavern floor below.


Alternatively--

"Oh yeah, one of the magical items in your epic mountain of loot prevents you from using any kind of fast traveling, such as dimension door. You are totally over encumbered. How do you get this shit home now bruh?"

[Grim Portent]

I think it'd be cool as a show of lavish decadence by mages. A carriage suspended by a series of immovable rods on ropes with the buttons pressed by finely dressed attendants, who may also be the source of a few mage hands so the movement isn't a literal crawl. Like some sort of upside down spider carriage slowly drifting along the street. Combine with a method for the caster to fly all the time for a 'the ground does not deserve to touch my feet' kind of thing.

[wierd]

If you are going to do THAT, then go with a bizzarro flintstones mobile.

You know fred's car?



OK-- Now, imagine that the netting is tied into a continuous "Loop", like a conveyor belt.  Embedded into the net are the rods. The rods on the "bottom" are activated, and supply the support.  The net moves along over the top of the "wheels" (big stone cylinders), and the rest of the "car" is supported on the extending axles protruding from the sides of the cylinders, as shown.

After that, you just have timing of activation and deactivation of the rods as the limiting factor, with a max movement speed of 30ft per individual action.


You can of course, make it however ornate, overly greebled, and ostentatious as you so desire.  The upside:  A mechanical widget cog could be doing all the button pushing as the rods go into position, and the net is being turned along by a single mage hand cranking on an overly gear-ratioed turn handle.  Dress it in a glove for added audaciousness.

[Persus13]

How are you dealing with the fact that it takes an action to deactivate the rod, and an action to activate it though?

[wierd]

It takes an action to PURPOSEFULLY activate the rod.

Since it is activated via a simple application of pressure to the sensitive end, this is an OBVIOUS DM "gotcha".  "oops, that carefully oriented immovable rod you suspended in the air, in the path of the rampaging hell beast, so that it would act as an impromptu lance, held in place by 8000lbs of resistance?  yeah-- you had the button end facing the monster.  On impact, the button got pushed."


We are abusing this same kind of logic:

The turn crank drives a little embedded gear, who's lobes are spaced precisely to touch, and depress, the button on the end of the rod as the conveyor moves it into place.

The hand is not pressing buttons. It is turning the crank.  The mechanical action of the crank is pushing the buttons.


The DM will likely balk, but will have difficulty finding a valid reason to disqualify.

[scriver]

"You're abusing the wording of the text to go against the intention of the writing" is always a valid reason to disqualify.

[wierd]

Could also point out "item type is 'adventuring gear', not 'magic (or wondrous) item'."


Does it help any that I see this kind of thing being created by a gnome?

[Trekkin]

What's the point, though? Ultimately it's still just you kludging together rules as written, rules as intended, rules as assumed and real-world physics ad hoc to make something strange that "should" work, and there's infinite ways to do that on your own time but ultimately none of them make much difference; all you're going to get from this machine over an arbitrarily stronger flying carpet is the other players' eyes glazing over while you congratulate yourself for being clever and then going on with the actual game. It will not, in a very important sense, be "real" in the consensus of the game, just "that thing wierd built" that's going to run headlong into Rule 0 if you insist on taking up table time going on about it or just remain an amorphous thing that does a thing otherwise. It's similar to how rules lawyers will bend the alignment rules into knots to justify their character being a dick because of some random nugget of their backstory and so on and so forth: ultimately the only question is how long you want to spend proving to yourself that you've won an argument with yourself and how much of it you expect your audience to sit through.

Theoretical optimization is fun, but ultimately why argue about it? It works the way you want in your own head, and that's the only place it'll ever actually exist, so ... congratulations for winning?

[wierd]

Context is a thing, Trekkin.
Grim Portent noted that he could see a posh wizard using an overly elaborate conveyance like this as background color.
I countered that if you are going to go that route (eg, background color), you should do something more like the bizzarro flintstone mobile, and then described it and how it worked.



The slug-rug is an ad-hoc player invention.
{and since you mention "no fun" rule 0, I remind you that activation of the rod is a move action, and does not have a skill check. This means it does not require computation or DM time when used in the manner described outside of combat, as stated in context. So No. It's a "No, let's NOT go into the dark abyss, Let's do this instead." which only has a story time passage cost.}

Flying track car is more a GM created flavor piece (You know, setting color) that would leverage real items (that could potentially get 5 finger discounted in passing).


Because the question of activation actions was cited, I gave an obvious out to explain how it could be evaded.  I approached it from the "as player" angle, since that seemed the thrust of the question, even though it was not the intention of the description.



Also, "Congratulations for winning" sarcasm applies to ALL fantasy role play.  If you are going to go there, you dont belong in this thread, IMO.

[pikachu17]

Wait, immovable rods are Uncommon? Is it just me, or all the coolest magic items Uncommon?

[wierd]

If they were common, the world would be full of insanity, and impossible to relate to.