Eldan
2010-08-09, 04:42 AM
Okay, here's the deal. For my Etherworlds campaign setting, I'm designing ships. While the fluff will be written up there (they are basically spaceships, except they travel in a breathable atmosphere), I also have statistics for these ships. Now, these are intended to be useful in combat, if quite simple. I'm not the greatest rules or statistics-writer, so I hope the combined insight of the playground homebrewers and critics can give me a few pointers.
Aethership statistics
Aetherships consist of hulls and sails, which have their own, separate statistics.
Hulls: in order to be light enough to allow movement, hulls are constructed from wood. Hulls determine most of the statistics of the ship, and destroying the hull completely destroys the ship.
Hit points: how many hit points the ship has. Reducing these to 0 destroys the ship. Since ships are created from wood, they take normal damage from sonic and fire damage, half damage from acid and electricity and quarter damage from cold attacks, as well as half damage from all ranged weaponry which is not a siege weapon.
Hardness: Normal wood has a hardness of 5, but see special materials, below.
Maneuverability: How maneuverable the ship is. This varies between Poor for warships to good for scout ships.
Speed: Given in both feet per turn and miles per hour.
Size: this represents the hulls size, from large for the tiniest one-man scouts to colossal for guild warships, and also determines the ships armor class.
Sails:
Sails are constructed from whispersilk. They have their own hit points and armour class, and destroying them makes the ship unable to move.
Hit points: Whispersilk takes normal damage from fire and sonic damage, half damage from electricity and quarter damage from acid and cold damage. It has 0 hardness.
Armour Class: the sails of an aethership are huge and stretching in all directions around the ship, counting as one size category larger than their hull for purposes of attacking them.
Special materials:
Aethership hulls are normally made of wood, but two other, rare and costly materials are employed sometimes.
Ghostwood is a silvery white, very light wood only found on drifting islands of rock in the deep ethereal. Hulls made from ghostwood only have hardness 3 instead of 5 and half as many hit points, but increase their base speed by 10 feet per turn or one mile per hour.
Ironwood is magically treated hardwood, deep black and with a metallic shine. Hulls made from ironwood have hardness 10 and three times the normal amount of hit points, but reduce their speed by 10 feet per round, or one mile per hour.
Now, the most important question I have right now before I write up a few example ships: how does one calculate the hit points of an entire hull? The SRD gives hit points per thickness of an object, but not area. From the few sample objects, I could extrapolate, but that quickly becomes complicated. Assuming a wooden door is 3 by 6 feet, as an example, gives it a little over one hit point per square foot. This does not quite add up with shields, however, which have 15 hit points for heavy shields, but are unlikely to be 15 square feet large (5x3 feet just seems huge to me, and I don't think they are thicker than a strong door).
Which, of course, still leaves me to calculate the area of an entire hull... is there any easier way to do this?
Aethership statistics
Aetherships consist of hulls and sails, which have their own, separate statistics.
Hulls: in order to be light enough to allow movement, hulls are constructed from wood. Hulls determine most of the statistics of the ship, and destroying the hull completely destroys the ship.
Hit points: how many hit points the ship has. Reducing these to 0 destroys the ship. Since ships are created from wood, they take normal damage from sonic and fire damage, half damage from acid and electricity and quarter damage from cold attacks, as well as half damage from all ranged weaponry which is not a siege weapon.
Hardness: Normal wood has a hardness of 5, but see special materials, below.
Maneuverability: How maneuverable the ship is. This varies between Poor for warships to good for scout ships.
Speed: Given in both feet per turn and miles per hour.
Size: this represents the hulls size, from large for the tiniest one-man scouts to colossal for guild warships, and also determines the ships armor class.
Sails:
Sails are constructed from whispersilk. They have their own hit points and armour class, and destroying them makes the ship unable to move.
Hit points: Whispersilk takes normal damage from fire and sonic damage, half damage from electricity and quarter damage from acid and cold damage. It has 0 hardness.
Armour Class: the sails of an aethership are huge and stretching in all directions around the ship, counting as one size category larger than their hull for purposes of attacking them.
Special materials:
Aethership hulls are normally made of wood, but two other, rare and costly materials are employed sometimes.
Ghostwood is a silvery white, very light wood only found on drifting islands of rock in the deep ethereal. Hulls made from ghostwood only have hardness 3 instead of 5 and half as many hit points, but increase their base speed by 10 feet per turn or one mile per hour.
Ironwood is magically treated hardwood, deep black and with a metallic shine. Hulls made from ironwood have hardness 10 and three times the normal amount of hit points, but reduce their speed by 10 feet per round, or one mile per hour.
Now, the most important question I have right now before I write up a few example ships: how does one calculate the hit points of an entire hull? The SRD gives hit points per thickness of an object, but not area. From the few sample objects, I could extrapolate, but that quickly becomes complicated. Assuming a wooden door is 3 by 6 feet, as an example, gives it a little over one hit point per square foot. This does not quite add up with shields, however, which have 15 hit points for heavy shields, but are unlikely to be 15 square feet large (5x3 feet just seems huge to me, and I don't think they are thicker than a strong door).
Which, of course, still leaves me to calculate the area of an entire hull... is there any easier way to do this?