11 ideas for Tenser’s Floating Disk

Does your D&D Wizard have the 1st level Conjuration ritual “Tenser’s Floating Disk” but struggles to find a use for it?

The challenge with the disk is that it stops moving if you are within 20 feet of it. Once your wizard is further away then it’ll try to follow you, floating 3 feet above the ground. In D&D 5e you can’t ride your own disk.

Here’s some ideas.

1. An easy way to carry extra gear, treasure or fallen comrades.
2. Use it to keep a chart or chest safe, raised off the ground while you rest below it.
3. Used as a trap – hidden in the floor and ready to be collapsed on command (above a three foot pit).
4. As shelter from aerial attacks or the weather.
5. Block corridor entrances to slow down mobs.
6. Trailing behind you in a horseback chase to make it harder for pursuers to overtake or get into shooting position behind you.
7. As a way to get over dangerous floors – like weight traps, swamp or lava.
8. Protect your food and rations from ants while camping.
9. Stand on it to gain a height advantage.
10. As an instant chair so your wizard doesn’t have to sit in the mud.
11. Protect it with boxes or wooden shields and have a halfling with a bow use it as a mobile archery platform.

The name Tenser is a famous one in D&D. It is an anagram of “Ernest”, one of Gary Gygax’s sons, and the name of his Wizard character. As you might have guessed Tenser liked his loot. Tenser’s floating disc was created in response to an adventure in the Greyhawk dungeons when Ernie and Elise Gygax’s PCs found a chest of 3,000 copper coins they couldn’t carry.

Have you thought of any more uses for Tenser’s Floating Disk? Let us know in the comments below.

Illustration by Zefanya. Creative Commons.