3eSJ: weapons and hull points

Hi all,

This is for all those people interested in 3e conversion of SJ.

Spent a good chunk of the weekend trying to come up with a system for using
hit points and hardness for ships, etc.  It was pretty unsuccessful so far.

The main problem is that old 2e SJ is not very consistent in it's
definitions between the weapons, Hull Point damage and personal damage.
For example, in 2eSJ a heavy catapult did something like 3-30 hit points of
personal damage and 2-8 hull points of ship damage.  This obviously does
not fit with the idea of 1 hull point = 10 hit points.  Also, the idea of a
(EG) a 20-ton Wasp ship with 20 hull points only having 20*10=200 hit
points doesn't compare too well against a 3e dungeon door of the same
thickness as the Wasp hull, which would have about 30 hit points.
Also, the siege engines in the DMG don't really do much damage.

As an example of what I was trying to do, consider a heavy catapult (listed
as doing 5d6 damage in the DMG).  OK, sounds like a lot, but take a Wasp
(hull of thick wood, maybe three inches thick at 10 hp/inch, hardness of
5).  The max damage of the catapult is 30, subtract 5 for the hardness,
gives 25 left, which is not quite enough to punch through the hull.
*That's a max hit from a heavy catapult*.  And that's only at one point on
the ship.
(also consider, average damage of that heavy catapult is 18, which is only
just enough to bust down a 1 inch thick door)

So from there I tried to think, well, say the heavy catapult does a lot
more damage, maybe 8d10 (gives 8-80 hp, which is something like the 2-8
hull points of the old 2e model).  This seems OK versus ships, but woe
betide the poor charcter who gets hit by one of these!  But ships realy
need a lot more hp to make them seem reasonable - if a Wasp has 200 hit
points then a 1-ton ship of the same general construction would have only
20 hit points (similar to a thick door, and a 1-ton ship, although small,
is much bigger than a door).
OK, I know this hp figure is just to make a hole in the door, etc, but a
hole will not down a ship, you need to screw up it's frame pretty badly to
bring it down.

Anyway, my conclusions were that someting needs to change pretty
drastically to get it all to fit for 3e.  Here's some ideas:
1) Ships need to have lots more Hit Points to keep them balanced against
other objects.  Maybe of the order of 30 or so hit points per ton of ship.
I'm still favouring higher than this, as the frame of the ship is important
as well as the hull (as in Leroy's shipbuilding system).
2) Thus either weapons need to do a lot more damage to keep them downing
ships in the same number of shots, or you have to accept that the number of
hits to take down a ship will become significantly greater.  This last
change would mean that weapons fire becomes less effective overall, which
would lead to boarding actions becoming the #1 way to take a ship out.
ALternatively, it would mean that ship combat becomes a more drawn-out
proposal, where it is much harder to take a ship down, and combat is more
likely to be a survivable (albeit damaging) prospect for both sides (not
necc a bad thing).
3) Perhaps the 2e Hull Point idea should be kept as is, with weapons rated
with two different types of damage (vs ships and personnel), and just use
the hardness and hit points things for characters trying to damage ships
with spells/hack their way through the hull, etc.

Thoughts and ideas are still floating around in the grey matter, and may
congeal into something useful at a later date, but I think that's enough
for now.  In the meantime any comments are welcome.

Cheers

Andrew Tiffany