Re: Damaging living Spelljamming ships?

In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Wed 01 Feb, Loki wrote:
> Actually there is no differtiation between the two in published SJ works
> (Unless its in War Captain's Companion which I have never gotten ahold of).
> There is mention of Elven ships being grown, but thats all it is, a brief
> mention. No riules mechanics were ever added about them.

There are loads of SJ bits that I haven't read, so I thought I
might have missed something!


> Now as far as post publication variants, it all depends on which homebrew
> system you are using. You ideas have a lot of merit, although personally I
> tend to treat them more like constructs (immune to sleep, charm, etc) should
> the issue come up.

I suppose it depends on how much like plants they are, as they
still appear to be growing. Druid or plant mage spells would then
be the obvious thing to work on them.

I was led to this by working on the custom spell lists for
priests of "All Smith", a home-brew god that I might post details
on some day, in case it might be of use.

Most of the stuff below comes from "Space Dryads", which is
mostly finished now, and some things from the Spelljamming rules
that go with the Tech spec.

A big problem with DnD specs is that often there are statements
that this or that is the case with one particular monster, but
not why, so it is difficult to figure out what might or might not
be an effective defence, or get-out clause. 3rd Ed at least seems
to do things better, though I disagree with some bits.

As to constructs being immune to various things, there is a
specific list (in AD&D 2nd Ed PHB) of what C~W doesn't work on:
non-corporeal, non-living, extraplanar; elven ships look living
to me...


> In my game the living ships (mostly ancient nautiloids and elven ships) get
> played like NPC's. Each has a character of it's own and communicates with
> the helmsman. I have not yet twiddled the mechanics. To be frank I am still
> smoothing out the 3.5 transition and havent gotten to that aspect of it yet.

That sounds like fun!

I need to thoroughly study the 3rd Ed rules, but there is the old
shortage of round tuits...


> -Loki
> 
> On 2/1/06, Dreamer <dreamer@??????.?????.??.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Maybe this is something that I've missed somewhere in the rules,
> > but how are the rules for damaging living ships different from
> > those for non-living ones?
> >
> > Disintegrate is listed as doing one hull point, for example,
> > which presumably applies to both living and non-living ships, but
> > should a living ship have a saving throw to resist this damage? I
> > would expect the larger elven ships to have quite good saving
> > throws!
> >
> > Reversed Heal, Harm, has no obvious upper limit (in theory it
> > even afflicts 300HP+ dragons or divine avatars), so should affect
> > living SJ ships, if the DM is generous leaving them with one hull
> > point.
> >
> > Would it make sense to say that as a vessel is starting to loose
> > function once it has lost half its hull points then this is
> > logically equivalent to a creature having zero hit points? So, a
> > Harm spell does half the hull points of a (living) vessel, and a
> > second one destroys it?
> >
> > You can then say that appropriate healing spells that work on the
> > sort of creature that the living ship is can restore hull points.
> > Two CLW for a hull point, a CSW for a hull point, a CCW for two
> > hull points, and a Heal for half the hull points?
> >
> > Does this make sense?

-- 
Dreamer
dreamer@??????.?????.??.uk
http://www.romsys.demon.co.uk/