Re: Grand Helm

According to the SpellJammer Ship Recognition Manual:

Ship: Quad of Thay
Crew: 10/63
Maneuverability Class: A
SR: As per helmsmen
Tonnage: 63
Cargo: 31.5 tons
Landing: Land yes / Water no
Armor Rating: 3 (-1 due to the bright light its covered with when a mage is at
the helm)
Save As: Best of metal or crystal
Armament: Ram, though on a roll of 20 there is a 25% chance 1d4 of the 4 claws
break off.
For every claw that is broken, the ship loses 25% of its maneuverability.
Once all four have broken off, the ship is incapable of movement,
so it usually runs away. :-)


The Grand Helm is unique to the Quad of Thay ship.
"Instead of having a defined helm and helmsman, the whole external ship
(above the living quarters) is part of the spelljamming helm.
This Grand Helm as it is called, allows up to four mages to sit
and concentrate their magical energies toward motive force.
The level of each mage is added together and divided by four,
rounding up all fractions.  This gives the ships SR."

The following is the only exception to the theory that spelljamming ships
travel at the speed of magic.

"When in wildspace, the Quad of Thay can travel at double spelljamming speeds
(that is can travel 200 million miles per day.)
Unfortunately, due to the magical phasing the ship goes through,
the Quad of Thay can never enter the phlogiston on its own power,
nor can it travel the rainbow oceans.
Only by being carried on the back of another spelljamming ship
able to navigate the flow could it be transferred to another crystal sphere."

One other interesting exception.

"When traveling within wildspace, a Quad is unaffected by the gravity plane
and well bodies smaller than 200 tons.  [Normally this is 10 tons.]
[The Quad's] gravity plane cannot extend beyond the outer boundaries
of the claws, nor can other ship's gravity planes enter.
Since gravity plane intersection does not occur, the Quad of Thay
rarely slows to tactical speeds."
If it does, they generally run away at max SR.


Optimus wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> last saturday we (that is me and my group of players) had another
> game of spelljammer and naturally the Quad mages appeared (I
> mentioned they are important in my campaign).
> Well, I remembered what was bugging me about their ship, the Quad of
> Thay: The Card states that the ship is powered by a "Grand Helm", but
> in the rules of the Spelljammer Box there is no indication what a
> grand helm is.
> I ruled that they just use a major helm and another device, which can
> be activated to cast spells while sitting at the helm. However the
> device lowers the SR by 2.
>
> Still I am not content with this and so I would like to know if
> anyone has an idea what exactly that "Grand Helm" is?
>
> With regards,
>
> Kai
>
> "Chase the wind... and catch it!"
> Ad for the legendary motorcycle 'Zephir'
> ___________________________________________________
> optimus@????.???.????-??????.de
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