Eberron Soarwood vs Darkwood - What's the deal?

[Xerlith]

Darkwood = 50% the normal weight
Soarwood = 75% the normal weight.

How would you rewrite Soarwood rules (A wood that after all should float on air) to make sense from the ingame point of view?

[the_david]

The lightest wood I could find was balsa at 7 to 9 pound per cubic foot.
The heaviest wood I could find was lignum vitae at 73 to 83 pound per cubic foot. (That would be denser than water?)

So there shouldn't be a problem here, except... Shouldn't a type of wood that is lighter and less dense be weaker? I thought darkwood had a higher hardness than regular wood, not a lower one.

[Hecuba]

Darkwood = 50% the normal weight
Soarwood = 75% the normal weight.

How would you rewrite Soarwood rules (A wood that after all should float on air) to make sense from the ingame point of view?

You almost have to rewrite soarwod to make it work. It's not treated consistently between books.

Some Eberron books have it light enough to float on air on its own, some have oceangoing boats made of our without floating away. Some indicate that airships will stay afloat without the bound elemental (which only provides thrust), while others indicate the elemental also provides lift.

I personally would go with the generalized position of the Explorer's Handbok, since it's whole point is to deal with magical transport. Working from the implications of that book:


Soarwood itself is light, but not lighter than air.
Soarwod used in airships is enhanced to make it float on air without lift.

[Tvtyrant]

I personally make soarwood lighter than some heights of air but not others, so it floats at a given height and effectively treats the upper sky as an inverted ocean. The elemental doesn't have to work to pull the airship up but to push it down.

[awa]

(That would be denser than water?)

So there shouldn't be a problem here, except... Shouldn't a type of wood that is lighter and less dense be weaker? I thought darkwood had a higher hardness than regular wood, not a lower one.



yes lignum vitae is denser then water and sinks not all wood floats and not all stone sinks ect.

density and weight aren't the same thing as durability for example lead is extremely heavy but not that hard while titanium is both light and strong

[Nifft]

Soarwood responds to elemental energies in useful ways.

It's like a magical insulator for the energies that are used to propel the vessel, so those on the interior aren't too badly affected.

Darkwood is very light, and certainly some parts of the vessel will be made from Darkwood, but it's also very expensive and in high demand for use in weapons and armor.

[vasilidor]

One could also say that soarwood represents a tree type with several variations of species, each of a different quality. and as far as lighter materials being weaker, diamond is lighter than lead - so that is most certainly not the case in the real world, so why would it be in a fantasy game?

[Debihuman]

In the Explorer's Handbook (page 41) it is noted that "[a] wind galleon’s hull is crafted partially from lighter-than-air soarwood—not enough to lift it fully...." You can call this a mistake or consider it a variant of normal soarwood because the Eberron Campaign Setting says,"Soarwood has the same physical characteristics as normal wood (hardness 5,10 hit points per inch of thickness), but weighs only 75% as much."

Methinks the writers of the description were not looking at the rules when they wrote this. As this is WotC product, this does not surprise me. They had terrible editors, who failed to catch this mistake among the many, many others.

Debby

[Da Beast]

Personally I like the idea of soarwood being lighter than air just because it makes a forest of soarwood trees sound awesome.

[Nifft]

Personally I like the idea of soarwood being lighter than air just because it makes a forest of soarwood trees sound awesome.

"Rain forest" takes on a whole new meaning when trees literally fall out of the sky on you.

[Xerlith]

So I went and asked Keith Baker himself alongside creating this thread, and he said, basically, that the properties of Soarwood are able to be easily amplified by the enchantments and tied to the elemental binding process - When the bindings come undone, the Soarwood stops "soaring" and the airship goes down. Which seems a reasonable solution to the different rulings of ECS and EH.

Basically, his stance is similar to



Soarwood itself is light, but not lighter than air.
Soarwod used in airships is enhanced to make it float on air without lift.


this.

I think I can work with that. Just got to add Levitation to the spells required to craft an airship. :smallbiggrin:

[Hecuba]

So I went and asked Keith Baker himself alongside creating this thread, and he said, basically, that the properties of Soarwood are able to be easily amplified by the enchantments and tied to the elemental binding process - When the bindings come undone, the Soarwood stops "soaring" and the airship goes down. Which seems a reasonable solution to the different rulings of ECS and EH.

Basically, his stance is similar to


Soarwood itself is light, but not lighter than air.
Soarwod used in airships is enhanced to make it float on air without lift.

this.

I think I can work with that. Just got to add Levitation to the spells required to craft an airship. :smallbiggrin:

Hooray. I love the the way my ego inflates when designers more-or-less vindicate my position.

In general though, I'd recommend some forethought in deciding how easy it is to disrupt the soarwood's lighter than air properties: if it goes with merely unbinding the elemental, you lose the narrative possibility of being set adrift. If you make it too durable, you significantly diminish the danger of a crash landing (since every reasonably sized plank becomes a life-raft/parachute). If you're at all interested in both story options, be sure to choose a happy median.

[Xerlith]

Hooray. I love the the way my ego inflates when designers more-or-less vindicate my position.

In general though, I'd recommend some forethought in deciding how easy it is to disrupt the soarwood's lighter than air properties: if it goes with merely unbinding the elemental, you lose the narrative possibility of being set adrift. If you make it too durable, you significantly diminish the danger of a crash landing (since every reasonably sized plank becomes a life-raft/parachute). If you're at all interested in both story options, be sure to choose a happy median.

I think this:


I personally make soarwood lighter than some heights of air but not others, so it floats at a given height and effectively treats the upper sky as an inverted ocean. The elemental doesn't have to work to pull the airship up but to push it down.

makes for a good idea to be worked with. If I rule that, say, if the hull's structural integrity is breached, the enchantments start to fail and the ship starts "leaking", or something like that, I can easily have both simply being stranded/adrift because of the elemental bindings' demise, while having the option of a crash landing really possible (and quite easy). I think it makes the most sense. I can also say that if the hull's breached but the elemental's still there, it can counteract the weakened magic of Soarwood enchantments to an extent.