Re: Helms

Just adding in some of my own thoughts on the matter;
I've been struggling with helms for a while now. 
Actually, I've got a pretty good-sized document at
home with a lot of the research I've done.

1. Generally, it looks like the way to approach magic
items in 3e is to start with a spell.  So, what spells
would be necessary to make a ship fly in space?  This
drives the cost of the magic item.  Btw, when I did
some calculations, helms are going to be pretty
expensive due to them being continously use, and even
if the base spell is mid-level, the cost can easily
exceed the prices in 2e!

2. Battle maps are generally small, so to get ships to
fit, you have to increase the scale.  Static & I
hashed it out (I've even got a chart somewhere with
the various scales v. battlemap sizes), and I think
either the 40' or 80' scales work best.  40' is
probably best, because spells with Long range have
increments of 40' (something Mark pointed out to me). 


3. Speed-wise, IMHO, ships should have speeds ranging
from 1-5, with 6+ in the "epic" range.  This is
largely because things get a little screwy at higher
speeds.  Beyond that, its hard to move a ship on a
battlemat & keep it actually on the map.  Plus ram
damage gets insane.

4. Another thing I consider is this: I lined up SJ
ships to ocean ships, in terms of abilities (other
than obvious change in environment).  Thus, a
hammership should *roughly* equal a heavy warship in
terms of the weapons it carries, crew size, and
overall abilities.  Again, I have charted these out,
which in part helped me decide that helms should scale
1-5, not 1-10.  

Anyways, just some of my thoughts :)  Still trying to
get UNBURIED from that mountain of emails you guys
sent to SJ-L ;)

Adam

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