Hello All. We're doing fine here. Hope you and yours are well?
If you could be so kind, I was hoping for some guidance in how ship-to-shore communications might work in a magical world. How would a king communicate with his admirals? What sort of magic item, or wizard for hire could a merchant use in keeping track of his vast fleet of trading vessels?
The only long-term solution for long-distance communication I can find in the core rules would be a Rary's telepathic bond made permanent. That's a pretty pricey way of doing it, though: 13,800 gp (most of which goes toward compensating the caster for the loss of 2,500 XP), and requiring a 13th level caster.
It might be easier to get a cleric to make a wand of sending, but that's even pricier: 21,000 gp for a 50-charge wand, and requiring a cleric or wizard around to use it. After that, we get into some seriously pricey things, like a crystal ball (even a visual-only ball could be used to receive visual messages).
If your campaign includes psionics, the king (or other "communication hub") can employ a psion with the correspond power, which lets the manifester form a two-way link with anyone he has met before as long as they are on the same plane. It only lasts for one round per level, though. It's a 4th level power, so it's probably not practical to equip each vessel with someone who can manifest it, but it is useful for the king to ask his admirals how they're doing.
There was some magic parchment from somewhere. You could write on it and the writing would also appear on its twin that someone else had. Can't remember where I saw it though.
I'm thinking sending spells and such along with messengers that can fly and/or teleport.
I had a campaign where a certain wizard gave Rings of Sending to her most trusted servants. The users could send messages to other users a couple times per day.
Of course, the wizard could hear and block every message, and use the improved version of Sending (the one that forces you to do something). The Ring of Admin, I called it. :p
Ring Gates right in the DMG have a 100 mile range, on the same plane, and you can pass up to 100 lbs. per day. That's a LOT of hand written notes. :mischief: If it was more efficient one side can even just stick their head through to talk to someone on the other end. If the 100 mile limit is a problem you could fudge a bit on the 100 mile limit, hand-wave a slightly more expensive custom magic item with longer range (in trade-off have smaller diameter rings?), or have sort of a network of them that allowed you to hop the message through multiple Ring Gates to reach further than 100 miles.
The 40,000 gold price tag is pretty steep, but we are talking about kings and admirals in crucial contact. Not some pig farmer chatting up his mom who lives on the other side of the village.
I noticed those, but 100 miles isn't very far when you're talking navies keeping in touch with their home bases. That's like two days' travel.
That's where you do communications stations, like the Radio Boats of the earliest days of radio, to act as relays. Set up relays on convenient islands or platforms anchored at sea (or ships on duty for a specifed period). Some might even do double duty as lighthouse boats for shallow reefs, etc. or scouts looking for pirate activity.
One could also potentially exend the range by adding in various modifying spells during the creation, for additional cost.
An example of doing a variant ring gate that allowed smaller items for longer distance could be taken to a logical extreme of potentially being too small to send most objects, but able to transmit sound waves or pebbles with a variant of magic mouth (possibly even reusable), for verbal orders.
A magical equivalent of the Traveller X-Boats, on a planetary surface, low tech/magic scale... hmm...
From the limited and expensive suggestions that are available it sounds it was/is something overlooked. I would hand craft a spell and or magic item to accomplish your goal. Restrict it in such a way to make it not useful for anything other than than simple, say written, communication with a specific end point a limited number of times per day/hour.
A piece of paper that can send one message every 24 hours to a linked piece of paper doesn't have to be that powerful or expensive. If Ring Gates are 40,000 something that only sends a written message, not teleport objects, could easily be 4,000 or less.
If you're going to invent stuff rather than see what the system already allows, you could do worse than see how Eberron deals with the issue:
QuoteSpeaking Stone: This device is key to long-distance communication across Khorvaire. A character who possesses the whispering wind ability of the Least Mark of Scribing can use a speaking stone to send a message to any other speaking stone; the sender must know the location of the target stone. This effect is similar to the whispering wind spell. However, the message travels at a rate of 1 mile per minute and has no maximum range or length.
In a Sivis message station, a gnome is always on duty by the speaking stone, listening for any new messages that may come in and scribing them upon receipt. Large cities, such as Sharn, may contain multiple stone stations. Major stations often possess more than one speaking stone.
Faint Transmutation: CL 5th: Craft Wondrous Item, whispering wind, creator must have the Mark of Scribing: Price 10,000 gp: Weight 30 lbs.
Some things to note:
- Use of this item is limited to people of a certain dragonmarked house, but can be used by 1st-level members (as long as they have the Least Mark feat). In the Eberron setting, these houses generally don't directly involve themselves with conflict between nations, but are happy to supply materials and occasionally manpower to everyone involved. If you remove this limitation, it should probably increase in price by at least 50%. In the setting, house Sivis usually charges 5 gp per page for sending a message using the stones - expensive for commoners, but well worth it for rulers.
- It works best for site-to-site communication, such as between cities. Since the sender has to know where the target stone is, it's not so good for ships. There are two ways I see of getting around that:
- Have the ships initiate contact, making sure that they include their location with the message. An item informing you of your location shouldn't be super-costly: 8,000 gp for an item constantly telling you where you are, or 360 gp per daily use for one that just tells you where you are when you use it (based on the 1st-level psionic power know direction and location).
- Use an assymetric system where the ships use a speaking stone to talk to the king, and the king employs either a wizard with sending or a psion with correspond to talk to the ship.
- There is a considerable lag involved with sending messages with the stones. A mile a minute means that if you're sending a message from the Moonshaes to Waterdeep (assuming the item survives the transplantation to Forgotten Realms) takes about 8 hours. Waterdeep to Mulhorand takes almost 2 days. Sending a message around the world (using Earth's size) takes 9 days. So while these stones might increase the reach of an empire, they're hardly ideal for one that's literally global.