A question of speed

[Grod_the_giant]

I'm away from books at the moment, but the Storm Serpent (I think?) from Hundred Devils has an Eclipse charm that lets you teleport anywhere in the same storm system--at which point speed is a question of "how big a storm can you make?"

[Synapse]

I'm away from books at the moment, but the Storm Serpent (I think?) from Hundred Devils has an Eclipse charm that lets you teleport anywhere in the same storm system--at which point speed is a question of "how big a storm can you make?"

Some common storms can reach 20-30km in radius. The biggest known typhoon reached....1100km of radius I think? One in the center of the blessed isle would hit both its northern and southern coast at the same time.

So a storm can get pretty stupidly large. The "usual" big storm is closer to the former, though. It's pretty analog to travel without distance replacing the cooldown with a fixed landing area.

[Sorcerous Overlord]

I'm away from books at the moment, but the Storm Serpent (I think?) from Hundred Devils has an Eclipse charm that lets you teleport anywhere in the same storm system--at which point speed is a question of "how big a storm can you make?"

If you take Beckoning That Which Stirs the Sky as your control spell, any weather effect you make follows you and lasts for hours. So lets do a little back of then envelope here.
Int 5 Occult 5 Specialty, Full excellency, 2 point stunt, and a willpowers will get you (10+1+10+2)23 dice with 2 auto successes. we can call that, on average, 12 successes.

Making a typhoon from clear skies is Difficulty 7. which leaves 5 threshold success. It costs half (round up) for it to persist, which means you have 2 remaining threshold successes. You have (Ess 5+Thresh 2) 7 miles radius out from you, and it lasts for (1+thresh 2) hours, 3 hours. The Sorcery has a Ritual cast time of "a few minutes". So at the max, we can say 5 minutes.

Adding that up, assuming the Storm Serpent charm doesn't have a reset condition, you can spend 5 minutes to make a 7 mile radius "teleport zone" (94 mph at this stage for 1 jump) and since the weather follows you, and is centered on you, you can now chain jumps as long as you have the resources to do so. assuming 7 miles again, and your turn as being 5 seconds, that second jump is 5,040 mph. If you can do this for 3 hours, you will cross 15,000 miles, aka 3/4ths of Creation.

Under ideal conditions though, moving a rainstorm to a typhoon is only diff 2, and if you roll higher and get say, 16 successes then you have 14 threshold (control halves to 7), which makes the second jump 12 miles, 8640 mph for 8 hours. or 69,00 miles, more than triple Creations distance

[TheCountAlucard]

Something tells me that the bit about the weather following you in the spell didn't take into account the possibility of teleportation. I'd assume that the weather patterns following you would still have to travel at the sorts of speeds that occur naturally.

[JohnDoe244]

Also, if you're blowing a full excellency every time, that's 4-8 casts before you're mote-tapped. So... like 40 minutes of travel -- you're not doing this for eight hours.

Still... it's a fantastic idea. Add in Stormcaller, perhaps, for instant rain?

[MrFamiliar]

Unicorn has a +5 speed bonus, which is the fastest of any creature in 3e.

Racing is an opposed roll. So if an exalt can roll more successes than an opponent, they are by definition going slightly faster than them. I wonder how many dice a fighter jet rolls when going supersonic?

Something tells me that the bit about the weather following you in the spell didn't take into account the possibility of teleportation. I'd assume that the weather patterns following you would still have to travel at the sorts of speeds that occur naturally.

For contrast, Rain of Doom moves with a control sorcerer at up to 15 miles per hour (Essence x3 mph) .

[JohnDoe244]

Unicorn has a +5 speed bonus, which is the fastest of any creature in 3e.

Joint fastest with Lesser Elemental Dragons.

Racing is an opposed roll. So if an exalt can roll more successes than an opponent, they are by definition going slightly faster than them. I wonder how many dice a fighter jet rolls when going supersonic?

A horse is +4. 500 mph on an Elemental Dragon is +5. 10mph on a Unicorn is also +5.

(I'm also not entirely convinced that you've drawn a logical conclusion there vis opposed rolls, racing and absolute speed. "The Tortious and the Hare" and "Flash vs Superman" come to mind.)

Ascendant Nova Phoenix is probably the closest example of a fighter jet. High altitude it's flying at just over Mach 3, but it has to slow down to reasonably participate in combat -- at which point it gets 5 bonus dice. I imagine a jet fighter would be the same: it can make an uncontested flyby (much like a Solar making a Difficulty 2 Melee roll to instantly dispatch an ordinary mortal guard), but if it's trading blows back-and-forth then it needs to be operating at back-and-forth relative speeds (+5 Speed Bonus, maybe +6, maybe +4).

For contrast, Rain of Doom moves with a control sorcerer at up to 15 miles per hour (Essence x3 mph) .

That's probably a good rule of thumb.

[Sorcerous Overlord]

Also, if you're blowing a full excellency every time, that's 4-8 casts before you're mote-tapped. So... like 40 minutes of travel -- you're not doing this for eight hours.

Still... it's a fantastic idea. Add in Stormcaller, perhaps, for instant rain?

You only blow an Excellency to summon the storm. I have no idea how the Eclipse Charm works though. RAW the storm is always follows you (no speed limit) but no sane ST would allow for this level of shenanigans. IRL Hurricanes move 10 to 35 mph though so there's that.

Although you could use the non-control version and keep summoning NEW storms with full excellency, which at E5 you could do probably 5 or 6 times, which would be 12 miles each every "few minutes", so with Stormcaller out thats roughly 12 miles in 3 minutes, aka 4 miles per minute or 240 mph. I admit this is very contextual and handwavy though.

Otoh, if there was a Second Circle Demon of Storms (Like Avadra pre-stormcaller), then maybe it could make a massive Continent sized thunderstorm and you could just teleport anywhere

[Synapse]

Akavadra's description is very much Third Circle scale, and summoning a storm with thousands of kilometers is definitely outside the second circle's power scale.

Other than that yeah, you want to bring an apocalypse just to teleport better? Go to town. A storm that big can exist naturally, and it's definitely fitting for such a mighty demon.

[JohnDoe244]

You only blow an Excellency to summon the storm. I have no idea how the Eclipse Charm works though. RAW the storm is always follows you (no speed limit) but no sane ST would allow for this level of shenanigans. IRL Hurricanes move 10 to 35 mph though so there's that.

Ah, now I see.

I like it.