Re: Gravity plane alternatives

In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Sun 04 Jun, Nathaniel Olsen wrote:
> Part of my recent spelljammer game was to change gravity to be generated  
> by the helm.  This has obvious implications for sargasso's, as well as for  
> small asteroids that wouldn't necessarily have their own gravity.  It does  
> however solve a lot of the problems involved in space travel.  The way the  
> system works is that all things have gravity in the basic sense.  Part of  
> the job of the helm is to be a focus for all of this gravity.  The helm  
> splits the gravity along a plane and thereby brings it to a nice even  
> constant amount.  This functions even when the helm is not manned, and can  
> be replicated be some simple magic items.  The process of aligning the  
> gravity on a ship during when the first helm is installed takes quite a  
> few hours.  Aligning the gravity of an asteroid like the Rock of Bral  
> could take days or even weeks.  The time to become unaligned is equally  
> long so it is quite simple to swap a helm, but to install a new helm on a  
> derelict takes a while.
> So what big problems have I missed?

The only immediately obvious big problem is the scale of magic
item needed to control gravity on an asteroid.

Most DMs seem to regard Helms as pushing the limits for magic
items which are not artifacts, but let this slide, as they are
needed for the SJ setting.

Gravity alignment for an asteroid sounds like something on the
order of a mithal, or epic magic, and may not suit most DMs
campaigns in terms of the DnD magical style and general power
limits.


I like your idea of there being a bit of inertia in gravity
alignment.

Do you continue to have 1G on/off binary gravity in this setting?


> Sledge

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