D&D 3E/3.5 3.5 ride the raven.

[end of the world]

Why do you need to enlarge yourself at all to begin with? Just enlarge the raven.

enlarge person only works for people. it doesn't work for ravens. i'm only going by the spells in the player's handbook, but i couldn't find any spells that would enlarge animals.

The spell would stop working on the raven the moment you moved away from the bird for any reason. Permanency wasted just like when the fighter finds out any weapon he drops won't reEnlarge when picked back up.

you are taking for granted that the rules for stepping away from the familiar supercede the effects of permanency.

i would be on board with what you're saying if i had gotten us both enlarged through a shared spell, and then made it permanent through a second shared spell. then the permanency spell would be forfeited if i moved away. but what i'm talking about only involves the enlarge spell being shared. the permanency spell would not be shared, and so i don't think it would be affected.

You might not want to cast the spell that way.

this almost seems to imply that you have another way in mind. if so, i'd like to hear it.

First off kudos for coming up with an awesome concept.

thank you. that's very nice of you.

First this is what I would consider a mount and a flying one at that so your DM may require you to have ranks in ride or handle animal or even a feat that lets you do this. So be prepared for that.

i'm prepared for that. i'm planning to take ranks in 'ride' specific to this particular mount. being an unconventional mount, i'll let the DM decide how many ranks he thinks i need before i'm adequately able to ride it.

Second the spell Enlarge Person is for humanoids. Now granted you are casting it on yourself, but there are several other precedents that show a difference between humanoids and monsters/animal such as hold monster/person. So while you may have found a gray area in the rules with familiars sharing this spell it is gray and your DM may say its not a person but a monster. So backup plan is to find an Enlarge Monster/animal spell. I checked the Spell compendium but didn't see one but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist in some form. So you might wanna find it. Look at druid spells first as they deal with animals more than any other class.

it doesn't seem like that much of a gray area to me. the bit about sharing spells with your familiar explicitly states "a master and his familiar can share spells even if the spells normally do not affect creatures of the familiar's type (magical beast)."

Third this is only going to take your bird from Tiny to Small and increase his strength to 3. While you will go from Small to Tiny. So here's the next question: Can a small Bird carry a Tiny creature given that birds stats? Remember a bird uses physics to fly, not magic. (I recall the scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail with two swallows and a coconut). The only way I see overcoming this is to get a bigger bird or make yourself smaller and the spells don't stack. There are rules on special mounts in some book. Maybe it there's an expanded list of familiars in like Complete Arcane/mage?

i put a lot of thought into this one, and at one point thought i might have to take a hawk instead for it to work. but then i started looking deeper into the math, and i think i'm okay. the reduce person spell says that the target's weight is divided by 8. my starting weight is 31 pounds. reducing me will put me down to about 4 pounds. a light load for a creature with a strength of 3 is 10 pounds or less. so even with some sort of custom made saddle, i should hardly be a burden on it.
i was also looking at it from this point of view. the description of the raven in the monster manual says it's two feet long. enlarging it would put it at four feet long. that's a hell of a bird. birds that big out in the real world have been known to carry off small dogs and the like, haven't they?

As for permancy it should work fine on you with no problems. Just remember it can be dispelled and you may want to look into how it works in Antimagic zones.

that's something i hadn't considered... and something i won't be reminding the DM of. my poor bird. just imagine it flying with me on it's back, and then shrinking down to normal size. yikes!

Also keep in mind your raven has to let you do this.

he's my familiar. i'm pretty sure he'll be cool with it.

And permancy with its xp cost is going to be expensive at such a low level. Usually its 5 gold per xp point spent. So in addition to the spell cost of a level 5 wiz spell (1125gp) add 2500gp to it....

well the whole reason i'm starting at level 1 is because my former character just died. i'm starting a new one from scratch, and joining the party of much higher level guys who didn't die. i guess that's a pretty unorthodox way to play, but we don't take it super seriously. it's just a cheap way for five boring married guys to get drunk cheaply on a friday night.

oh hey... there was a point here... one of the higher level guys who didn't die is a sorcerer. i'm hoping i can get him to add permanency to his repertoire or spells and help a brotha out. as for the hit he would have to take in his xp... well he's a pretty nice guy. i'm hoping he'll just take that bullet for me. if not, we've got a pretty good bit of money in the party pool, i think. i'm still going to go through an entire level of rogue before any of this happens. we'll come up with something.

The way I read it is that what you are suggesting works up until you try and dispel the enlarge person on yourself. Because the Enlarge person spell is a single spell (just shared between 2 targets) when you cast dispel the entire spell is dispelled.

i wouldn't be dispelling it. i'd just be waiting for the duration to run out for me while someone casts permanency on the raven.

I thought there might be some glitches in permanently enlarging the familiar with Enlarge Person, but I am not the arcane / familiar expert. I will leave that to others.

i think the share spells thing i quoted above pretty well takes care of those concerns.

I do think that a "tiny' humanoid could ride a "small" bird. Think about the relative size categories of normal humans and most mounts, flying or otherwise. I get the "they fly by physics not by magic" point, but I still think it would work... if you can get the permanently enlarged familiar.

good call. i hadn't thought about that. i think this is going to happen. that's pretty cool. thanks for the input everyone.

 

[frankthedm]

you are taking for granted that the rules for stepping away from the familiar supercede the effects of permanency.

Permanency does one thing, it changes the spell's duration to permanent. It doesn't make the spell immune to be removed through other measures.

this almost seems to imply that you have another way in mind. if so, i'd like to hear it.

Not with enlarge person. Gods know if there are other spells that make a caster larger with a target line of "You".

 

[ghostcat]

Enlarge is a single spell which effects two creatures.

The spell description for permanency says "This spell makes certain other spells permanent.

My take on this would be that permanency would work on the spell not the raven, therefore you would remain enlarged until you dispelled the spell. so:

1. if the raven moves more that 5' from you, it looses the enlarge under the terms of shared spell

2. If you dispel the enlarge on yourself then the spell is no longer in effect, so the raven is on longer enlarged.

Sorry. Nice idea though.

 

[kitcik]

If this fails, try to get your DM to agree to Permanent Animal Growth. It seems philosophically consistent with Permanent Enlarge Person, which is expressly allowed.

It's not like you are trying to break an animal companion - you are actually making your familiar more vulnerable in order to do cool stuff.

 

[Tharkon]

I'd say since your raven is sort of borrowing your Enlarge Person spell and it's not a spell effect on its own it can't be made permanent separately.
And even if you made the entire spell permanent the Share Spell effect would disappear if the raven got over 5 ft. away.

Even if it was possible its extremely risky, some anti-magic and you're a small creature riding a tiny bird 100 feet in the air, something which does not end well.

You could just train a dire hawk (RotW,p190) and ride that, but mounted spellcasting is really something more in the druidic area in my opinion, because animal companions can be much larger than familiars, and druid spells can buff your mount easily.

 

[Jacob Marley]

If this fails, try to get your DM to agree to Permanent Animal Growth. It seems philosophically consistent with Permanent Enlarge Person, which is expressly allowed.

It's not like you are trying to break an animal companion - you are actually making your familiar more vulnerable in order to do cool stuff.

Unfortunately, animal growth can only affect creatures of the animal type; the familiar is a magical beast. I suppose you could bring in a regular raven; then have animal growth cast on it, along with permanency; then have reduce person cast on yourself, along with permanency; then acquire your familiar, and have it be this particular raven. That could work.

Edit: The only problem is that animal growth is not on the list of allowed spells under permanency.

 

[kitcik]

As I said, "try to get your DM to agree..." Note that Permanency explicitly allows for DM approval of other spells and, as I said, Animal Growth seems to fall along the same lines as Enlarge Person (which is on the list).

And I agree with your order of operations.

 

[end of the world]

Enlarge is a single spell which effects two creatures.

The spell description for permanency says "This spell makes certain other spells permanent.

My take on this would be that permanency would work on the spell not the raven, therefore you would remain enlarged until you dispelled the spell. so:

1. if the raven moves more that 5' from you, it looses the enlarge under the terms of shared spell

2. If you dispel the enlarge on yourself then the spell is no longer in effect, so the raven is on longer enlarged.

Sorry. Nice idea though.

i think you have just spotted the fatal flaw in my plan. ah well... it was fun while it lasted. i think i'm still going to go for being tiny. i'll do some thinking on what familiar i'm going to take. maybe a cat. my move silently score is already really badass for a level 1 rogue. i'll just have to find some bigger bird to train and fly around on.

 

[Herobizkit]

Blah. Scratch that.

If I were your DM, I'd say thumbs up, because it's a lot of power and expense for something that's "just cool".

When in doubt, Cool > Rule. It's my Rule 0.

Edit, also:
In addition to personal use, permanency can be used to make the following spells permanent on yourself, another creature, or an object (as appropriate).

Enlarge Person.

Ta dah.

 

[Jacob Marley]

i think you have just spotted the fatal flaw in my plan. ah well... it was fun while it lasted. i think i'm still going to go for being tiny. i'll do some thinking on what familiar i'm going to take. maybe a cat. my move silently score is already really badass for a level 1 rogue. i'll just have to find some bigger bird to train and fly around on.

You could try using an Eagle. It is already a Small animal with Strength 10. With decent ranks in Handle Animal you could rear it (DC 16) and train it for riding (DC 15) or combat riding (DC 20).