Moving a Sphere of Annihilation

[Hypersmurf]

Here's some fun...

Have a pair of wizards in a duel.

Each is chained by the foot to a stone pedestal, forty feet apart. In the middle of the room, a sphere of annihilation.

They can cast spells at each other, or try to use the sphere...

Sounds familiar...

-Hyp.

 

[allenw]

So you made them move hundreds of miles? At 10ft/round, maybe a little more with a Talisman? How long did that take? Seems like this would be a useless device unless you happened to find it exactly where you needed it. It moves at the pace of a slow walk. Would make a good garbage disposal though I guess. Be good for the Assassin Guilds' leader to help him get rid of the bodies.

10th-level wizard + +5 INT mod + Talisman = (10+5)x2 = +30 on the Sphere control check (doubling both the level and the INT bonus may be excessive, but that's how it is in the DMG), and only havin to roll every 2nd round.

The control check is DC 30, so it's impossible to fail, and the average result is 40, for an average speed of 20' per round. As I recall, the trip took about 3 weeks. The controller had plenty of Concentrate skill, so I didn't object to the idea of concentrating 6 seconds out of every 12 for 8 hours at a stretch.
This was in 3.0, so the controller was flying and invisible most of the way; these days it'd be more difficult to avoid terrain and observation.
And yes, the PCs use it as a garbage disposal, mostly for evil magic items. They haven't gone overboard, though, since the main reason they decided to bring it home was because they believe (with some reason) that it can be used as a portal to Tharizdun, and they want to keep it out of evil hands (so to speak); however, they're not sure that (potentially) giving Tharizdun evil magic items is always a good idea. Of course, they *could* have just destroyed it with the handy Rod of Cancellation they found at the same time, but greed won out.