Greywander
2022-05-20, 06:06 PM
I'm working on a homebrew class that allows the player to turn into a vehicle, and without getting too into the nitty gritty of the mechanics, one aspect of this class is that you'll have battle stations that passengers can man. The main purpose of this is to allow fellow players to participate in things like ship-to-ship battles (or equivalent) instead of just sitting back and watching you 1v1 an enemy vessel. It's also meant to bring your power level down to be comparable to the other PCs when you're operating independently while still allowing you to achieve the power levels necessary for ship-to-ship battles when fully crewed. However, I currently don't have any restrictions on who or what can operate a battle station.
Now, this actually isn't as big of a concern as it might sound at first. You won't have enough battle stations for the whole party until tier 3, and it's not until tier 4 when you unlock the gargantuan size form that things get truly ridiculous, but tier 4 is supposed to be ridiculous. Since fellow PCs are more likely to hit on attacks and such than random commoners, it's probably better to crew yourself with your fellow players, and combined with the singular battle station slot you have in tier 1, there isn't really many ways this can be abused in the early game. And by endgame, you're supposed to be overpowered. I guess mostly I just find the idea silly that you can technically buy a full crew of chickens for less than a gold piece. So I feel like I need to specify some restrictions on who can man a battle station, but I'm not sure what metric to use.
I think my main concern is inadvertently locking out a PC from being able to use a battlestation, since one of the primary reasons for creating them was for the other PCs to use them. If I base it off of your INT score, then players who rolled for stats instead of using point buy might get locked out. If I base it off of proficiencies, e.g. vehicle proficiencies, then some players might not have them. I could require any weapon proficiency, as all classes give you at least one, though then we might get a case where it would make sense for an important NPC to help out except they don't have any weapon proficiencies. If I base it off of creature type, then there will always be weird edge cases, e.g. familiars aren't technically beasts, so either familiars can operate a turret or no celestials, fiends, or fey can, and some PCs might be a fey race. And anyway maybe we're okay with apes operating a battle station, so it's not even all beasts that we necessarily want to block, and some awakened beasts would definitely be fine.
So what would be some good criteria to use? Or should I leave it up to the DM?
Now, this actually isn't as big of a concern as it might sound at first. You won't have enough battle stations for the whole party until tier 3, and it's not until tier 4 when you unlock the gargantuan size form that things get truly ridiculous, but tier 4 is supposed to be ridiculous. Since fellow PCs are more likely to hit on attacks and such than random commoners, it's probably better to crew yourself with your fellow players, and combined with the singular battle station slot you have in tier 1, there isn't really many ways this can be abused in the early game. And by endgame, you're supposed to be overpowered. I guess mostly I just find the idea silly that you can technically buy a full crew of chickens for less than a gold piece. So I feel like I need to specify some restrictions on who can man a battle station, but I'm not sure what metric to use.
I think my main concern is inadvertently locking out a PC from being able to use a battlestation, since one of the primary reasons for creating them was for the other PCs to use them. If I base it off of your INT score, then players who rolled for stats instead of using point buy might get locked out. If I base it off of proficiencies, e.g. vehicle proficiencies, then some players might not have them. I could require any weapon proficiency, as all classes give you at least one, though then we might get a case where it would make sense for an important NPC to help out except they don't have any weapon proficiencies. If I base it off of creature type, then there will always be weird edge cases, e.g. familiars aren't technically beasts, so either familiars can operate a turret or no celestials, fiends, or fey can, and some PCs might be a fey race. And anyway maybe we're okay with apes operating a battle station, so it's not even all beasts that we necessarily want to block, and some awakened beasts would definitely be fine.
So what would be some good criteria to use? Or should I leave it up to the DM?