D&D 5E So how do you describe an airplane in 5E?

[Gilladian]

Well, I really like the ideas of a ring that fits over/onto the top of the tower, and can whisk itself away... but for the setting I'm imagining, I think the sled/sleigh/carriage idea is actually more appropriate. I'm going with a whole setup here; six winged horses, made of solid bronze, with mithril manes, tails and wings. A large carriage with sledge-runners instead of wheels, and in the front, where a driver would sit, is a control panel with a half-dozen symbols engraved on a large dial. Each symbol can be rotated to appear at the top, in a window. Once the destination is selected, the driver then uses a magic whip mounted in the dash to tap the lead horse and trigger the journey. The driver can, by use of the reins and the whip, exert some control over the course the sleigh takes, but cannot change the destination.

The whole point of the device is to give the PCs a thrilling ride to a fixed destination, and the possibility of visiting several other unknown but exciting places in the future, but NOT giving them the ability to travel freely anywhere and everywhere. I've had that sort of freedom wreck an earlier campaign, as I lost any semblance of ability to know where the PCs would end up next, and a major activity - travel- was removed from the campaign.

I did think about teleport circles, or a flying tower, but I've used both of those in previous campaigns; in fact, teleport circles are a well-recognized feature of many old ruin sites; several campaigns focused around recovering and using teleport keys and gates to solve problems. So I wanted a different feel; this wizard was odd, reclusive and anti-social; he didn't want to do things the way other wizards did, and this just feels "right". And, it just occurs to me, since it was known that in the ancient days when he was alive, he visited a location very near to the home town of the PCs, I can have one of the destinations BE that location, and they'll have an easy way to go back home, later. Once they figure out how the sleigh works, anyway.

 

[skelekon]

Tenser's Floating Disk, extra large. Transparent to give the characters vertigo.

 

[was]

Tenser's Floating Disk, extra large. Transparent to give the characters vertigo.

Building on that idea, how about a Glassteel floor? Kind of like a glass-bottomed boat.

 

[Bawylie]

Function defines form, no? Absent the need to obey physics, I guess it would look like a stadium or some other structure designed to hold some large number of people. If it were designed to move cargo, probably it would look like a warehouse. If it required defense as well, plating perhaps. It's gonna be a camel, though - so in the end it appears outwardly as an ankylosaurus without legs, a gargoyle style face, a battering tail. Inwardly it's like an Amphitheatre with stadium seating & a few rooms for storage. Probably it's separable along the horizontal axis, so it sort of lifts its shell to deploy ramps or whatever for easy access. And naturally has driver and passenger airbags.

 

[aramis erak]

I' in the "flat-bottomed skyboat" crowd...

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

What powers it?

If, say, it's powered by summoned air elementals, I'd have it be a ship whose sails are filled by the constant blowing of the elementals, and it's carried aloft on the backs of other elementals.