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What counts as ground for this ritual, if you have a 5x5 piece of stone/paper/metal/wood under the disk, and that is moved up, say 10 feet, would the disk phase through that stone, or hover 1 foot above it?

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3 Answers

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I don't believe the rules ever formally state what exactly is or is not "ground." With that said, here's what I would use to evaluate this:

  • Does the item have a large enough surface area to support the disk?

  • Does the item have a reasonably uniform surface? (i.e. not someone's head and shoulders, not steeply angled, etc.).

  • How much weight can the item support? It doesn't necessarily have to support the full payload of the disk, but it should be more substantial than (for example) a cloud.

  • How much is the surface moving? Something that's moving a great deal (like the back of most conscious creatures) is probably not very "ground-like."

At the end of the day, it boils down to a GM call.

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So if for example, you were to float a 19 pound slab of wood with far hand, and summon a tenser's disk ontop of it, would you be able to fly, mostly unrestricted as long as you kept using far hand/mage hand? – Kedearian Nov 4 '10 at 17:16
@kedearian My ruling would be no. The object might be large enough, but it can only support one pound of weight. And I wouldn't consider a small, moving object to be particularly ground like. From a game mechanic stand point, you have the question of "how do you move the wood and the disk at the same time?" from a physics standpoint you have "how much downward force does the disk exert, and what is its coefficient of friction with the surface?" – AceCalhoon Nov 4 '10 at 17:25
@kedearian But as I said above... This isn't something that has hard and fast rules. The scenario you outlined just doesn't feel right to me, but others might see it differently. – AceCalhoon Nov 4 '10 at 17:27
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The disk levitates 1 foot off the ground, anything under the disk is not crushed by the weight of the disk, so support should not be an issue. If the disk is tethered to the "ground" then i think movement is simple. – Kedearian Nov 4 '10 at 17:30
Doesn't quite feel right to me either, and I have an inclination to believe there's rules against it (I'll check later). In any case, do bear in mind that you don't just "cast" Tenser's Floating Disk. It's a 10-minute ritual. – Iszi Nov 4 '10 at 17:33
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up vote 4 down vote

"The ground" counts as the ground for Tenser's Floating Disk. It can't be tricked, exploited, or fooled, because it's magic and not physics.

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Some players don't care for such "non-rules" interpretations, but this is always my stand by. Its supposed to be magic, so you can't "trick" it into working when it shouldn't. More over, I'd always imagined that it being on the ground was part of the nature of the spell, such that a mage would understand that it just doesn't work. – CodexArcanum Feb 17 '11 at 19:25
up vote 3 down vote

I'd say the ground under the disk does need to be able to support the disk - it's meant to be read as an "effectively infinite" source of upward force.

But, I'd say it doesn't need to be uniform or such. It's essentially a hovercart - it can detect the force it's applying to things on it, apply the necessary counterforce to keep them from falling off, and magically support itself on what's beneath it without the physical restriction of touching.

(Heh. Maybe it can never apply upto 2000 pounds of force, no matter how high your Arcana. Instead, what's increasing is its coefficient of friction. High level disks are sticky.)

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