Re: Damaging living Spelljamming ships?

In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Fri 03 Feb, jamesriley wrote:
> 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.

Thanks for finding the reference!

As I understand your comment a Heal/Harm can only work on one
hull point, and hence ten hit points (-1D4), at a time?

Do you think this some sort of "large objects have sectional hit
points" scheme?

If you hit a SJ vessel with enough normal damage, then you divide
the number of hit points done by ten to find out how many hull
points you do. I don't recall any rules about only being able to
damage one hull point at a time, which makes me think a sectional
hit points scheme isn't normall in use.


I am not clear why Heal/Harm, and in partcular CLW/CSW/CCW, don't
work on trees - they don't fall in the list of things Cure Light
Wounds doesn't work on in the AD&D 2nd Ed PHB.

For interest, look at the Live Oak spell (priest 6th, PHB pg.228)
which has an interesting application for Plant Growth in that it
can be used to heal 3D4 hit points, instead of making the live
oak (fake ent/huorn) bigger. If this was usable on an elven
living ship then you could say Plant Growth would repair one hull
point.

The implication could be taken that DnD is only interested in
healing trees that are mobile. Or, that something about making a
tree mobile by using a Live Oak spell on it means that Plant
Growth can be used to heal it. Even if the second was the case
then maybe there is a spell you can put on an elven living ship
so it can be healed?

Is there something special about trees as living creatures that
means that they can't be healed? You would have thought druids at
least would be enthusiastic about finding a way to fix this!


> 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). 

Again, is this some sort of sectional hit points scheme?

I don't think that I have seen a revised system where hull points
are 100HP rather than 10HP - but this does seem a little too
good!

Also this reminds me a little of the Palladium SDC/MDC problem,
which I had hoped was dead and buried!

(Sorry, I probably shouldn't mention non-DnD games systems.)

I had not even thought about animals which act as living spell-
jamming vessels, star dragons etc - that is a can of worms that I
hadn't even started to open!

(Hmm. Gigantic worms as SJ vessels... Hmm. [grin] )


> 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? 

I was trying to draw a comparison between a living creature being
on negative hit points, and the way SJ ships that have lost more
than 50% hull points start loosing function. Generally living
creatures on positive hit points are assumed not to have lost
limbs or organs, so I thought that this logic might be useful.

I was not claiming that living vessels might lose consciousness
by taking more than 50% of their hull points, and that this would
alter how they responded to a Helm.

Partly it was about if you could get a Harm spell to work on a
living SJ ship, and I didn't think that just one spell should be
able to effectively near total demolish a ship.


> 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/