Speed of sound with a white dragon

[LTwerewolf]

I'm not sure what's stopping the dragon from being scattered across a square mile after he hits though.

[Douglas]

No, it was errata to Footsteps of the Divine that killed Chuck. Persistent Spell has always had the clause forbidding its use on dischargeable spells, but the original wording of FotD was that you could "end the spell early", or something like that, to get the 1 round mega boost. Errata changed the wording so that you could "discharge" the spell to get the mega boost.

And yes, this was most certainly specifically aimed at Chuck, because the interaction with Persistent Spell is, I'm pretty sure, the only thing in the entire game affected by this particular wording change.

[Duboris]

I'm not sure what's stopping the dragon from being scattered across a square mile after he hits though.

Considering its a white dragon?

Snow.

[Golden Ladybug]

Forgive me for being ignorant, but how would 15/adamantine protect the dragon from hitting the ground at over 4,4 billion newtons?

Can I sig this

[LTwerewolf]

Can I sig this

Of course.

[gooddragon1]

I totally want to sig this. May I please?

Sure.

Forgive me for being ignorant, but how would 15/adamantine protect the dragon from hitting the ground at over 4,4 billion newtons?

It's not for that actually, my idea was just to get him to turn upwards in 20 feet before hitting the ground just to have him break the sound barrier. The iron body spell is to keep him from blacking out. If you want to keep him alive I'd say he might need timeless body power instead and some other way to double his speed (that straight arrow movement feat i think).

EDIT: The dragon in question could be paragon and pseudonatural which could result in 6x or 4x speed (depending on how you view it) and thus keep the iron body thing working.

[Doxkid]

I'm not sure what's stopping the dragon from being scattered across a square mile after he hits though.

As always, the answer to this problem is being undead. A Dracolich can do this once every 2d4 days if it has a decent stash of dragon corpses in its lair.

Coincidentally, he possesses Frightful presence and I would DEFINITELY allow him to trigger that as he makes his dive-bomb attack.
~~~~
"A wave of dread washes over you. For a moment, it feels as if your lives are merely moments of amusement for beings who barely regard you as living things. I would ask you to make a will save, but..."

[gooddragon1]

As always, the answer to this problem is being undead. A Dracolich can do this once every 2d4 days if it has a decent stash of dragon corpses in its lair.

Coincidentally, he possesses Frightful presence and I would DEFINITELY allow him to trigger that as he makes his dive-bomb attack.
~~~~
"A wave of dread washes over you. For a moment, it feels as if your lives are merely moments of amusement for beings who barely regard you as living things. I would ask you to make a will save, but..."

Also nicely solves the problem of blacking out if he just wanted to experiment as well as not having a penalty to movement speed.

[Wise Green Bean]

Ya know, the dragons strength score only goes up by 6. And it's body weight just multiplied by 10. I know it's not RAW, but Jesus, if I were DMing this, I'd say the dragon wouldn't be able to lug it's 80 ton ass off the ground. I know we don't slap encumbrance on wizards with iron body who logically couldn't move their own arm, but biological flight that apparently can only happen on a light load is a bit different in my mind.

[Ashtagon]

I was just randomly thinking of how to break the speed of sound somewhat simply and thought of this:

A colossal+ paragon white dragon wearing a belt of battle with the run feat and having the spell iron body cast by itself on itself.

It has a movement speed of 350 (700 but half from iron body). While running this becomes 1750. Straight down it's 3500. Taking an extra full round action means it moved 7000 feet in a round.

6 seconds in a round means 7000/6 = 1166.7 feet per second. Speed of sound at sea level is 1,116.43701 foot per second. Between down and up of clumsy maneuverability is 20 feet. So the dragon can avoid splatting against the ground and thanks to iron body it shouldn't suffer any of the G-Forces involved.

I'm seeing a base fly speed of 250 feet for a white dragon (surprisingly, they have a burrow speed too). I didn't realise you could run with anything except ground movement, but it's RAW legal (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#fly specifically allows it), so yeah. I'll assume the 350 base speed for being a paragon is legit.

A "dive" attack is essentially a charge, and is a full-round action that let's you move double your speed. However, running is also a full-round action. You can't do both in one round, unless you have some kind of action-economy buster.

Where are the rules that effectively let you double your speed when moving straight down? Since I can't find them. If they are somewhere, I'm fairly confident that "straight down" wouldn't include a vertical drop of 20 feet over a horizontal span of over 1000 feet.

Also, this "take an extra round"? From where? The past or the future?

Overall, I'm seeing 1750 feet of legitimate speed.

[Allanimal]

Where are the rules that effectively let you double your speed when moving straight down?

The flight maneuverability table on p. 92 of the rules compendium states this. It may be other places as well.

Also, this "take an extra round"? From where? The past or the future?

Using the belt of battle?

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'm seeing a base fly speed of 250 feet for a white dragon (surprisingly, they have a burrow speed too). I didn't realise you could run with anything except ground movement, but it's RAW legal (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#fly specifically allows it), so yeah. I'll assume the 350 base speed for being a paragon is legit.

A "dive" attack is essentially a charge, and is a full-round action that let's you move double your speed. However, running is also a full-round action. You can't do both in one round, unless you have some kind of action-economy buster.

Where are the rules that effectively let you double your speed when moving straight down? Since I can't find them. If they are somewhere, I'm fairly confident that "straight down" wouldn't include a vertical drop of 20 feet over a horizontal span of over 1000 feet.

Also, this "take an extra round"? From where? The past or the future?

Overall, I'm seeing 1750 feet of legitimate speed.

The double speed when going down is in the SRD under the rules for moving in 3 dimensions. It's also in the more rules chapter of the DMG.

As for the double actions, that's from the belt of battle the dragon is wearing.

Then there's attacking via divebomb. If the dragon wants to do damage with this, he does it by simply slamming into the target as a falling object. It's not a dive attack, it's a belly flop. Otherwise, he's just doing a fly-by to freak the party out sans attacking.

[gooddragon1]

Advanced Dragons

Speed

When a dragon becomes Colossal, its fly speed increases by 50 feet and its maneuverability becomes clumsy. When it reaches Colossal+, its fly speed increases by another 50 feet, and its maneuverability remains clumsy. A dragon’s land speed and other special movement types (swim, burrow, and so on) do not change.

Gargantuan to Colossal: 250 to 300
Colossal to Colossal+: 300 to 350

[MesiDoomstalker]

Now, here's what you do. Your Colossal+ Paragon Pseudonatural White Dragon (lets call him the White Comet) has some other Dragon freinds, one of the varieties with better spellcasting. These Dragon buddies setup a series of Gates in the White Comet's path, sending him through different planes of existence. The White Comet is of course buffed with spells to protect him agianst the harmful effects of the various planes, as well as his innate Spell Resistance. As long as The White Comet doesn't try to go through the plane of Earth, Water or Fire, he can make a sonic boom happen in multiple planes at once!

Why, you may ask? The same reason The White Comet exists in the first place. Because why not?

[Ashtagon]

advanced colossal white dragon base speed 350 feet.

Run feat means he flies at x5 base speed as a full round action (1750 feet)

Belt of battle lets him do it all twice (3500 feet).

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20040629a
If he were "just flying", he'd need to spend at least half that moving forwards (1750 feet), and could spend the other half descending (1750 x2 = 3500 feet). Total 5250 feet (875 fps, or 266.7 m/s).

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20040706a
However, he can instead enter a fast freefall, and gets all his movement in a dive (7000 feet) plus 1000 feet of freefall distance (assuming he spend the previous round also dive-bombing), for 8000 feet total (1333 fps, or 406.4 m/s).

So yeah. Anything you can accelerate, I can accelerate faster

The only problem is whether or not white dragons have a maximum altitude, since this requires an upper ceiling of at least 12,000 feet.

[gooddragon1]

Ya know, the dragons strength score only goes up by 6. And it's body weight just multiplied by 10. I know it's not RAW, but Jesus, if I were DMing this, I'd say the dragon wouldn't be able to lug it's 80 ton ass off the ground. I know we don't slap encumbrance on wizards with iron body who logically couldn't move their own arm, but biological flight that apparently can only happen on a light load is a bit different in my mind.

Except that the lifting capacity doesn't scale linearly...

798000 lbs as a light load or 399 tons. He'll be fine.

Debating about whether or not to tac on shadow template (1.5x speed) and look up that fly in a straight line speed increaser feat.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-leg...ike-arrow.html

It's not a feat, it's a spell from dragon 308 called fly like an arrow. Gives you cheetah sprint.

:D

350 (Use wish to override iron body slowdown for 1 round)
x15 sprint instead of run for 1 and run for the other
x9 (to the movespeed directly) shadow, pseudonatural, paragon templates
x2 straight down

94500 feet per round.
15750 feet per second.

Slightly more than 14 times the speed of sound (there was footsteps of the divine mentioned but that was errata'd).

Also: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=189568

Use of allied gate with respect to elemental plane of air to accumulate all the necessary travel space before immediate impact.

I imagine a combat usage of this looking somewhat like this does:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kH61aqsPSE

[Eisenfavl]

Even vague, half efforts to boost caster level still give your footsteps of the divine a duration measurable in millennia.
(20 * 1.5^14390 = X = Wiz caster level, MFK and Ur Priest give ~3 times that, so we are at 100 * 1.5^14390 ft a second.)
You should be travelling a distance in the hundreds of digits of light years. This is, of course, just from that spell and ignoring speed factors like shadow or paragon, because I don't know how the interaction works.

[Ashtagon]

Where are footsteps of the divine in the rulebooks?

[Psyren]

If the party wizard can't survive a supersonic dragon made of iron at epic levels it's his own fault really.

You need to wait until epic?

[Douglas]

Even vague, half efforts to boost caster level still give your footsteps of the divine a duration measurable in millennia.
(20 * 1.5^14390 = X = Wiz caster level, MFK and Ur Priest give ~3 times that, so we are at 100 * 1.5^14390 ft a second.)
You should be travelling a distance in the hundreds of digits of light years. This is, of course, just from that spell and ignoring speed factors like shadow or paragon, because I don't know how the interaction works.

What boosts are you referring to, and what is MFK?

[MachineWraith]

Sounds really awesome.

This isn't quite on topic, but I had to post it.

I clicked that link, and in a rare moment, decided to actually watch something with ponies in it. Right as the blue one starts her upward dash thing, World Ablaze by Killswitch Engage came on my WMP. It synced up pretty dang well, and the combination of metal and ponies made me lol pretty hard.

Carry on.

[Psyren]

^ MFK = Mystic Fire Knight AFAIK

[Snowbluff]

This isn't quite on topic, but I had to post it.

I clicked that link, and in a rare moment, decided to actually watch something with ponies in it. Right as the blue one starts her upward dash thing, World Ablaze by Killswitch Engage came on my WMP. It synced up pretty dang well, and the combination of metal and ponies made me lol pretty hard.

Carry on.

/)^3^(\

Actually, that sort of thing is pretty common. You have no idea how many PMVs use awesome rock tracks. Sadly, it's never enough!

[GreatWyrmGold]

Forgive me for being ignorant, but how would 15/adamantine protect the dragon from hitting the ground at over 4,4 billion newtons?

Very rarely is the ground made of adamantine. Even more rarely does this state last long.
If nothing else, it helps.

I'm not sure what's stopping the dragon from being scattered across a square mile after he hits though.

Absurd amounts of DR, HP, and other defensive abilities. Barring that, resurrection.

I didn't realise you could run with anything except ground movement, but it's RAW legal (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#fly specifically allows it), so yeah. I'll assume the 350 base speed for being a paragon is legit.

Why wouldn't you be able to? Are birds unable to go faster than they do leisurely? Fish? Moles? Spiders?

Anyways, I approve of all methods by which dragons accomplish with flesh, blood, and a sprinkling of magic what it took decades of aeronautical engineering to achieve with the best of the world's scientists, a wide variety of alloys and other artificial materials, and much more than a sprinkling of money.

[Answerer]

Spiders?

I can find neither citation nor refutation for it now, but I've read in the past that spiders do not (cannot?) actually run, at least by the definition used for quadrupedal and bipedal animals (i.e. a sequence of motion in which there is a step where all legs are off the ground).

[TuggyNE]

I can find neither citation nor refutation for it now, but I've read in the past that spiders do not (cannot?) actually run, at least by the definition used for quadrupedal and bipedal animals (i.e. a sequence of motion in which there is a step where all legs are off the ground).

Based on my somewhat limited knowledge of invertebrate anatomy, it's probably (in part, at least) because spider legs are hydraulic and less dexterous.

[Answerer]

I did find a video of a spider that basically does front-flips across the desert. Doing that, it achieves speeds about five times as fast as the fastest spider can crawl/walk/run/whatever-we're-calling-it, apparently.

[Sziget Pengék]

I was just randomly thinking of how to break the speed of sound somewhat simply and thought of this:

A colossal+ paragon white dragon wearing a belt of battle with the run feat and having the spell iron body cast by itself on itself.

It has a movement speed of 350 (700 but half from iron body). While running this becomes 1750. Straight down it's 3500. Taking an extra full round action means it moved 7000 feet in a round.

6 seconds in a round means 7000/6 = 1166.7 feet per second. Speed of sound at sea level is 1,116.43701 foot per second. Between down and up of clumsy maneuverability is 20 feet. So the dragon can avoid splatting against the ground and thanks to iron body it shouldn't suffer any of the G-Forces involved.

Best Idea. What Maneuverability?

[Sziget Pengék]

What is the terminal velocity of an iron dragon?

Approximately magic meters/second.

i'm sig-ing this, i hope no one minds :x

[Shalist]

First, read this to understand why the Draconis Supersonicus is something of an endangered species.

Now, lets see if we can give Rudolf, Harbinger of Christmas, a steady cruising speed of Mach 100 or so.

Other speed multipliers

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When applying multipliers to real-world values (such as weight or distance), normal rules of math apply instead...Similarly, a blinded creature attempting to negotiate difficult terrain would count each square as 4 squares (doubling the cost twice, for a total multiplier of ×4), rather than as 3 squares (adding 100% twice).

So if, for instance, you have multiple affects doubling your speed, you multiply them, rather than add them, together.

Psuedonatural for 2x, of course.
Paragon for 3x.
The Horned Helm (AEG pg 133; 38,000g) for 2x speed.
The 'Rapid Wrath' (Ghostwalk, 11702g) (a 'carried' spear) for another 2x.
Shaundakul's Boots (MoF pg 165) for another 2x, but only for 5 minutes each day.

So you have 24x movement; 48x for a few minutes.

'Wind at back' (MoF spell, drd4, pg 134) doubles your overland speed for 24 hours.
'Fly like an arrow' (Dragon Magazine #308) lets you move at '10 times your normal fly speed,' but...only in a straight line, can't do anything but move, and you had to take a full move the previous round...still awesome though.

24x speed in combat, 480x overland; double that for 5 minutes/day.

Now for running:

Spoiler

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You can run for a number of rounds equal to your Constitution score, but after that you must make a DC 10 Constitution check to continue running. You must check again each round in which you continue to run, and the DC of this check increases by 1 for each check you have made. When you fail this check, you must stop running.

While wearing boots of the wanderer, you automatically succeed on any Constitution checks required for running or making a forced march

Incidentally, the 'Calvaryman's Saddle' (Dmag 334, 8500g) gives your dragon the run and endurance feats. Alternately, the 'Panther mask (MIC pg 201, 2700g) just gives you 'run'.

Now you can run for hours on end, meaning you can use it outside of combat. Now we're moving 120x in combat, and 2400x outside of combat (and 2x that for 5 minutes/day). We just need to boost our base movement speed a bit (I'm a bit weak, here...):

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Aeriel Alarcity (RoTW spell) gives +30 unnamed to speed, and +1 to manueverability.
Cloud Wings (SS 64, spell) gives +30 unnamed to speed.
Collar of umbral metamorphisis (ToM 156 22,000g) for +10 to speed from that template. (edit Its worth noting that the template itself is LA+0 for dragons. /edit )
'Air Heritage' feat (Planar handbook pg 37) for +30 unnamed
Haste or whatever (customized, slotless horseshoes of speed?) for +30 enhancement.
'improved speed' feat for +20 unnamed to flying.
Shandukal's boots for +10 unnamed.

=> +160 to speed, for a base movement speed of 510. Rudolf's tactical speed would be 120x (61200 ft/round tactical; ~7000 mph, mach 9); double that with the boots, and 20x that for his cruising speed out of combat; a single strafing breath from Rudolf would leave an 11 mile swath of Christmas cheer.

Miscellaneous thoughts / mentions:

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-Alter Self: I don't speak polymorph...can a dragon snag a different dragon's flight speed?
-Chronocharm of the Horizon Walker (MIC, 500g) 'move' as a swift action 1/day.
-Flyby attack (SRD) attack at any point during a move.
-Mobile spell-casting feat (CA 111) Ditto for casting.
-Flyby breath (Dragonlance Campaign Setting ~pg55) Ditto for breathing, except a double-move.
-Strafing breath (DCS) Breath AOE lengthened to 1/2 your fly speed, need to go in a straight line while breathing.
-Could swear there was some metamagic component or feat that improves flight spells *ponder*

edit: Forgot to apply the +160 speed before psuedonatural.
edit 2: spoilers for slightly nicer formatting. Still clunky; I mostly wanted to give folks something to chew on.
edit 3: added 'paragon' template as well, and fixed some math.