Re: What System for Ship Combat do you use for 3E?

Spot distance rule sin 3rd Ed are crap, pure and simple. penalty for EVERY
10 feet and you couldnt see anyone :> which flies in the face of logic, make
it 10 YARDS and it works better.
Also ships are *huge*. Wonder how many folk have every actually been out of
their houses, hm? ;) You can spot a ship, a van, a tree etc at up to 2
miles, easy, and thats without elven eyes ;)



Silverblades Suitcase
www.silverblades-suitcase.com

I'd rather be a Fool who believes in Dragons,
Than a King who believes in Nothing
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Doolan" <markdoolan@?????????????????.com>
To: <SPELLJAMMER-L@??????.???????.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2003 8:57 PM
Subject: [SPELLJAMMER] What System for Ship Combat do you use for 3E?


To List members that play 3E version of spelljammer.

Over the last two years I have tested a few systems to resolve ship to ship
combat. I have found that each had it strengths and weakness to it and have
wondered how others have handled ship to ship combat in 3e. I will bring up
a few points that my players had with some of the systems used. I also would
like to hear how other DMs have handled 3E spelljammer in their campaigns.

First is to use a system that had 50 or 100 yards to a hex/square... but the
players being the smarmy people they are stated that each hex/square would
be a -15 or -30 to spot checks and that at a distance of even more then
hexes/squares characters would not even be able to make their spot checks to
see another ship let alone fire upon it. Another disadvantage to large hexes
is that ships that move 1 hex per tactical speed rating or such are soooooo
much faster then most critters; this is the one reason I have moved away
from this system as once a ship decides to avoid combat with a slow moving
critter the critter has little chance of catching a ship that moves 150 to
300 feet per tactical speed rating. About the only way to explain this away
and allow critters that are slow moving to 'keep' up with ship is that it is
caught up in the ships gravity field and is dragged along no matter what the
ships tactical speed (this assumes the critter is smaller then the ship).
One of the initial reasons I like the 50/100 yard hex/square system was that
most ships can fit within such.

Another system I been working with is a variation on D20 Spelljammer with
hexes instead of squares and each hex being 40 feet across (instead of the
30 feet to a square). The reason to use 40 feet was more to accommodate long
distance spells that have 400 feet + 40 feet per level. This also made it
easy to use fireballs as they have a 20 ft. radius (40 feet across the
diameter) and the ships could be sectioned off into 40 feet sections.  This
system has seemed to serve me the best so far as many of the critters in
space are able to keep up with the ship's tactical speed (ranging anywhere
from 40 feet to 240 feet).

I have also done away with wildspace creatures having two different speeds
(tactical/flight), their speeds the same be it in an atmosphere of a planet
or that in wildspace during tactical speed combat and that being their
flight speed. I am working it so that all creatures from my campaign having
flight and are born in wildspace (such a star selkies and such) to be
updated with 40 feet increment of flight (for easy of combat in space) if
and when I finally decide to keep 40 per hex/square (which seems very
likely).

I have since 2E spelljammer enjoyed hexes more then squares for combat and
have continued to prefer hexes.

Mark T. Doolan
The Shattered Fractine
http://www.shatteredfractine.com

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