Re: Damaging living Spelljamming ships?

In response to the question of living ships, I found an obscure reference
years ago in the "sage advice" column of "Dragon" mag. Essentially, a living
elven ship is like a tree, so heal and harm spells don't affect them at all.
also if you consider, harm will destroy all but 1d4 hit points, but ships
are rated in hull points not hit points so even if you allowed heal and harm
to affect them as living creatures not large plants, then a harm spell would
damage all but 1d4 hit points of one hull point, almost doing one hull point
of damage. In the case of small jammers which are living animals, whose
bodies are rated in hull points, then a heal spell will repair one hull
point from 60% to 90% depending on how you have set up your hit point to
hull point ratio (e.g. 10 HP= 1 Hull pt. or as in a revised version; 100HP=
1 Hull pt. where the percentage would be 96% to 99% repaired).  As far as a
50% loss in hull pts is concerned then the ship has lost function (which is
to say that it is not maneuverable at all and cannot control its vector
becoming in essence a flimsy rock), not lost consciousness if it is a living
vessel. To cause a living vessel to lose consciousness would require more
than 50% damage while still retaining at least some structural integrity say
about 25%-30% of its hull pts. Does this solve your dilemma? 

V/R FC2 Riley, James R. 
cel: 228-249-2967
e-mail: jamesriley@???.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Spelljammer Setting Discussion
[mailto:SPELLJAMMER-L@??????.???????.com] On Behalf Of Loki
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 4:50 PM
To: SPELLJAMMER-L@??????.???????.com
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Damaging living Spelljamming ships?

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.

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.

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.
-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/
>
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--
George "Loki" Williams, writing and other abberrations
PEACH- Please Examine and Critique Honestly

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