Re: Damaging living Spelljamming ships?

In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Sat 04 Feb, jamesriley wrote:
> On Fri 03 Feb, Dreamer wrote:
> > In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Fri 03 Feb, jamesriley wrote:
> [snip]
> > 
> > Thanks for finding the reference!
> 
> Yes, I know, but it was nearly 10 years ago, I can't remember everything
> that far back!lol I only remember that it had to do with druids using
> healing spells on elven ships and the response was the sectional hit points
> scheme you referred to.

I'm really not in favour of introducing a sectional hit points
scheme unless you need to. I've tried them, and they introduce
all sorts of nasty complications.

A Damage Reduction scheme tends to give better results, I feel.
Otherwise it is back to DMs adjudicating things on a case-by-case
basis.


> > As I understand your comment a Heal/Harm can only work on one
> > hull point, and hence ten hit points (-1D4), at a time?
> 
> Yes that about sums it up.
> 
> 
> > Do you think this some sort of "large objects have sectional hit
> > points" scheme?
> 
> Possibly, but I think it refers more to the sense of structural integrity
> vs. loss of life measured. 
> 
> 
> > 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 normally in use.
> 
> Actually the SJ rule for personal weapons used against ships is
> the norm, just like in your example above. Most spells that are
> not area effect are adjudicated the same way. That is why the
> disintegrate spell does only one hull pt of damage, the area of
> effect is <= the 10x10x10 cubic volume of one hull pt of ship.

I thought there was some argument about one hull point being a
10'x10'x10' volume? Back to the spacial tonnage being one of
these really difficult to quantify measures?

Looking up the history of shipping using Google and Wikipedia
they list the various sorts of tonnage, none of which was by
weight until quite late, when people realised the displacement of
the ship gave useful information. The original ship's ton was the
amount of cargo space needed to store a 'tun', a large barrel
containing about 256 gallons or near a cubic metre.

Then there is the issue about spacial tonnage giving you the
amount of air a ship drags around with it!

I get confused...


> > I am not clear why Heal/Harm, and in particular 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.
> 
> You are right, I was in error in my last posting. They will work on plants,
> they just won't regrow lost structure/hull points. That would require
> grafts, regenerate spells, or plant growth controlled by elves, druids or
> rangers familiar with the crafting of the structure in question.

Ah! I think I might see a logic that is being followed!

Living elven ships are a mixture of a living creature and a
crafted thing. While the fact that they are living might mean
that healing magic will work on them, their nature as a living
thing does not include their shape as a spelljamming vessel. So,
if you heal them, then what you get is their natural shape, not
their crafted shape.

Not very useful if you need a vessel to spelljam in!

So, off-the-shelf healing spells by things like druids might help
stop your ship from dying, but they wont restore its function as
a ship.

Maybe you need to cast something like a Mending spell (probably
an improved version) which knows how to fix the damaged shape of
a crafted thing, at the same time as a healing spell?

Or, use a healing spell of a craft or artificer god (preferably a
god into shipwright work) which might repair both inanimate
things and heal living things. For example, from the home-brew
custom spell list of Priests of Trurl:

Cure Light Wounds: also works on machines, in particular living
ones. Priests using this typically produce and make use of a
healing salve on biological creatures, or use some form of repair
tool on machines.
Level: 1st.


The obvious source of a healing spell would be from a priest of a
craft or artificer god who was into controlling the growth of
living things, preferably including plants.


> The logic seems to be whether the damage repaired referred to structural
> damage or its hit points as a measure of life. E.G., you can chop off one
> limb from a tree and damage it structurally, but not do enough damage to
> kill it outright (barring decay and parasites); alternately you can chop up
> all the limbs and the trunk of the tree and not only destroy it
> structurally, but also do enough damage to kill it too. So while a CLW might
> restore the hit points of the severed limb to the tree as a whole, it won't
> necessarily restore any structural integrity (hull points) lost. To heal the
> example tree it would have to be put back together before hit points could
> be cured. We may apply the same logic to elven ships and any other plant
> based structure like the tree homes that arboreal elves live in.

I've seen people use the bigger healing spells to 'glue' back on
things like severed limbs on people, and I don't see why you
shouldn't do this, as long as you do it before the limb dies. The
same logic might apply to using healing spells to glue back
together severed parts of trees, or living elven ships.

Otherwise, you would need to use something like Regenerate, if
the equivalent of a limb is severed, maybe combined with some
sort of Mending or plant re-growth control spell.


> > 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.
> 
> This is the ref that the sage advice column used for the healing/repair of
> elven ships.

That's interesting!


> > 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?
> [snip]
> 
> I don't think we need to go that far. It seems to me that use of the Plant
> growth to restore the damaged spar, truss, bulkhead etc and then use a cure
> type spell to heal the graft would be sufficient. 

I might have issues about Plant Growth giving enough control over
the shape regrown, and the need for at least Carpentry, if not
Shipwright, skill.

I'm not clear why a cure-type spell would be needed as well.


> > 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!
> 
> I honestly can't remember the source of the newer HP ratio, but it
> may have actually been a typo in a supplemental for the SJ books. I seem to
> remember something about different construction materials having more or
> less HP per Hull pt depending on its type. Also I seem to remember the old
> 2ed AD&D castle and keep guide saying roughly the same thing about
> structural pts of wood vs. stone/metal etc...

I'm not sure I like the sound of this... Another complication!


> > Also this reminds me a little of the Palladium SDC/MDC problem,
> > which I had hoped was dead and buried!
> 
> No, like a zombie, it still shambles about terrifying the natives.

And, I thought DnD had ways of dealing with the undead! [grin]


> > (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!
> 
> That can I already have opened in abundance. Kindorii riders, small jammers,
> certain types of space-going dragons, even skaaver sleds.

Yes, but they at least have their own, natural grown, shapes. So
standard healing spells should work on them without any problem.


> > (Hmm. Gigantic worms as SJ vessels... Hmm. [grin] )
> [snip]
> 
> > 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.
> 
> okay, I see what you were getting at, and yes that is part of the reason I
> am sure that the guys that wrote the SJ rules went with the only damages one
> hull point logic. In the earliest D&D space ship adventures preSJ,
> disintegrate read area effect as "one object or 10 cubic '" 2ed changed the
> "one object" part and limited the spells effect to items of a given size
> that would fit within 10 cubic '. Now you have to ask does the ' mark read
> as feet indoors and yards outdoors or just feet or just yards?

I know a number of DMs who refuse point-blank to believe that
spell ranges change when you go "outdoors". They also point out
that this puts mages up there with archers for range.

Personally, I'm inclined to stick with 10' being ten foot, and 1"
being ten foot, no matter where you are. Messing around with
scale changes inside a game has broken more than one otherwise
good system.


AD&D 1st Ed PHB Disintegrate:

"Any living thing can be affected, even undead, and non-living
matter up to 1" cubic volume can be obliterated"

I would have thought that 1" cubic volume is 10'x10'x10', i.e. a
thousand cubic feet, and that would be good enough for anyone!
That is about 28tns of water! The rules do not appear to consider
creatures larger than this, or are at least unclear on the
subject. Mind you, a hole that size in most creatures has got to
hurt!

Probably the largest thing they were thinking of was something
like a dragon, and they thought that the spell ought to dispose
of all of the creature, not just part of it.

I notice that the Original D&D Disintegrate spell explicitely
mentions dragons as something totally destroyed and doesn't give
a volume (I didn't check Greyhawk, or Swords & Spells, so there
might have been later clarifications).


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

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