Re: SJD20 question - Cost to the pilot?

<<<<        I'll give you three examples, some that I've been working on for
a
while:

* Spells & magic sails are good, especially if balanced against helms.
Such as being slower than helmed ships & not being able to land on
planets (thus limited to asteroids & flat worlds).>>>>


I like this one. And I've been kicking around ideas for many components that
will make a ship fly through space without using a Helm. Since a helm is
everything you need to fly through space safely these componets will just
have one aspect of the helm, for example:

Helm have the following functions all in one item:
 1. Produce breathable air
 2. Functions as an inerta dampener
 3. Provide protection against the extreme tempatures of space.
 4. provides a low powered deflector shield (for those pesky micrometers)
 5. Propulsion - A. Sublight B. SJ speed (hyperspace, warp, or what ever
your campaign uses)
 6. Manuvering (which you could add this to propulsion)

I might have missed a few other things but you get the idea. Now you can
have a magic item and/or spell handle one of these functions. So a ship
without a helm could have up to six magic items to allow it to function as a
space craft, the advantage to have mulitpule devices to run a ship is that
if one of these goes down (through a critical hit) then you still have back
ups. Where as if the helm takes the crit then you are in big trouble
especilly if you use RW physics.

Some items that can provide these funtions can be:

Solar Sails/Mana Sails - propulsion (There are different types, the higher
price ones move your ship faster.
Rod of dampaning - Inertia Dampaner
Tempature Crystal - Tempature protection (can't remeber the 3e spell name
for this)
Rod of force (or something to that affect) - deflector shield.

These are just off the top of my head. I did use some of these in the old SJ
campaign and they worked well not to mention they did not cost as much as
the helm.